The Adventures of Super Jock and Awkward Girl
by briennesbeauty
Summary: Or, how, over the course of one very long year, Jaime the Jock forged a humanoid tie with science partner and social reject, Brienne. / Rather, the high-school Braime fic you never knew you wanted. This is probably going to get very long. 14/30 posted.\
1. Science Sucks (As A Rule, Now More So)

**The Adventures of Super Jock and Awkward Girl**

**A/N ~ **You see, I could not leave this unwritten. Once the idea was here, it kept poking me and poking me until I relented and wrote it. In other news, I've written this as an American school and I'm English. Flay me if you like, and also drop a review or I'll cry. You know crying girls make everything uncomfortable. Each 'coming up' thing is for humour purposes only, and references stuff that comes up in much later chapters.

**Coming up… **Making an appearance as a subplot will be Lya and Rhaegar as a cutesy taboo couple whilst hormonal Cersei fumes over everything and Daddy Tywin meddles in the love lives of all three of his children! Additionally, what is _with_ that Littlefinger dork and his obsession with Brandon's girlfriend? **Find out in The Adventures of Super Jock and Awkward Girl!**

**Science Sucks (As a Rule, And Now Even More So.)**

Life was running _just too well_, for Jaime Lannister wasn't it?

That was the first thing that ran through that over-inflated golden head of his, when Mr. Hoster Tully read off his name from the pristine papers that condemned the students of Westeros High to their year-long science lab partners. Quite frankly, Jaime had never felt that passion for the sciences ignite within him, and particularly not when compared to his younger brother's aptitude for those _arts_. It was bad enough you didn't get to choose who you had to study with all year. And yet, he could hardly tell father outright that he despised the damn class, seeing as said father was the vice principal of the school. It was an obvious discomfort for him, an elephant in the room of school-centric discussions; he was Jock Jaime, destined for football scholarships and prom crowns. He was _not_ a scientist. He didn't need scientific studies in his life and he didn't care what _litmus paper _was (what even _was_ litmus paper?). So perhaps using these arguments he could broker a tentative fight with his father about switching the class for something useful and worthwhile – namely, avoiding being the science partner of – dear god, this could _not_ be true – _Brienne Tarth_.

Last year was bearable. Last year was fine. He'd been paired up with Robert 'Robbie The Heart-Robber' Baratheon, as he was known to the Westeros Dragons cheerleaders. A boy of beauty and sporting aptitude almost as renowned as his own – but not quite. 'Not quite' enough to make him look good, all around, without dragging his popularity through the mud. Robert B was rife with more disinterest and unintelligence than anyone ever gave him credit for, and the two had enjoyed a year of raucous football discussions and minute explosions and harassing some smarter, overall more scientific kid into doing their papers. But this was actually going to ruin his life. No, this was actually going to _kill _him. Brienne_ Tarth, why, mother of god, why her? Someone up there has it in for me. Maybe it's Mom._

It wasn't as if it were a mere teenage sexism matter, either. He liked girls well enough. No, he _loved _girls. Gods, he wouldn't believe his luck if he was paired with some hot cheerleader – heaven knew that the majority of the student body at Westeros was madly in love with him. Seven hells, even Melara Hetherspoon, that freckly little speck who ran about after his sister and dreamed of marrying him someday would have been better. Even _the janitor_ would have been better.

_Brienne Tarth._

He'd be the laughing stock of the Dragons. He didn't quite understand what he'd done wrong. _An entire freaking year_.

"Now, now, students, settle down," Mr. Tully tried, through the post-lab-partner-announcement babble. Kids were glancing around for their assigned study buddies, and Jamie watched as his friends high-fived one another from where the class lined up against the walls waiting for their assigned seats, cheering boorishly as they were paired with teammates, paired with _the guys_. Girls grinning and hugging – hugging? Some people took this whole lab-partner stuff _way_ too seriously, Jaime reflected – as they found friends. A few trailing kids muttering awkward words at one another as they were paired with those they'd never spoken with. And him.

Robbie Baratheon clapped him apologetically on the shoulder and muttered condolences, Meryn T, wincing in pity, sympathy. Gregor Clegane had the nerve to laugh out loud as he passed him, and he heard a snatch of something that sounded like 'poor bastard' as he went to his seat, damn him. This was not what was supposed to happen. As the idiot teacher kept directing pairs to their seats around the Bunsen-burned-lined room, Jaime quickly became the last of his inner circle of guys to be given a table – apparently they were going by the thing itself's name, _T._

"Brienne Tarth and Jaime Lannister, if you could sit just at the back, please – next to Brandon and Catelyn, if you will." _Brandon and Catelyn!_ Brandon bloody Big Shot Brandon Stark, alright guy and pretty good substitute Dragon, got to study with his girlfriend all year, and he was stuck with Brienne Tarth. Jaime sighed exhaustedly, glaring at the supposed girl as he shoved past her to occupy the far window-side plastic chair, of the two that signalled his year-long doom by the table that also signalled his year-long doom. And agony. Doom and agony. This would give the team a good laugh, and Cersei, his own infuriating twin, and – and _everyone_!

Gauche and gawky, Brienne – perhaps one of the more prominently ridiculed of Westeros High's social outcasts, next to maybe only his brother – hunched over in the chair next to him. Great. Just great. Maybe this was some banal and terrifying dream. He stabbed his hand with his biro, praying to wake up. No such luck. And now his hand hurt. Great.

Jaime sighed theatrically again, as Mr. Tully launched into an exceptionally dull speech about _the wonders of _life and the _majesty of this longwordlongword and that longwordlongword _and the _utter wonder that is school-edition textbooks, _lazing languidly in his chair and attempting to balance said biro across his nose, just to emphasise the fact that he _freaking hated this_. Meagre titters from outer-circle acquaintances. Stupid laugh-misers. He'd thought that perhaps his only way through this class from now on – assuming his father wouldn't allow him to drop it – would be to be the _ironic guy_, to make ridicule of all Tully's teachings.

Apparently not.

A few minutes of deafening silence and trying not to look at Brienne Tarth later, Jaime scrawled some kind of crude joke he'd stolen from the TV last night down, made a paper aeroplane and shot it at Brandon Stark on the next table. Brandon whispered something to Catelyn, and then crumpled the paper, tossing it into his jeans pocket. Of course. Cat's father taught this class (_with, _Jaime thought_, as much enthusiasm and vibrance of a plastic spoon_). Wouldn't want to make a bad impression on the girlfriend's dad by laughing at Quarterback Lannister's stupid piss-takes first lesson.

"To conclude – as a welcome back to school treat, all this lesson shall comprise of is the studying of pages thirteen to twenty of the textbooks that will be handed out in a moment, and answer the questions on pages fourteen and eighteen. You may confer with your lab partner, and do try to remember all learnt today – you'll need it for next lesson; we'll be examining some of the most fascinating slides…"

Jaime groaned melodramatically, tunelessly tapping the polished surface of the table with his biro, repeatedly clicking it in and out and in and out and in and out until Brienne sighed heavily, and he felt her kick her bag rather violently from where it shied away from his bag under the table. He supposed she was hardly enjoying their arrangement either. But, he decided – his plight was by far worse. However much she was not enjoying this, she probably endured _not enjoying_ every day here. He was used to admiration and non-stop enjoy_ment_. Reluctantly, he blew the blonde hairs from his face and slid his dusty textbook across the table to him, flipping it to required pages and unzipping his crimson hoodie. Brienne dug around under the table in her bag, pulling out a battered notebook and resigning herself to miserable studies. She pointedly disregarded him.

It was not fair, he thought, glaring at her as she ignored him. Rather than focusing on the work before him, he studied Brienne in a state of perpetual annoyance, eyebrows knitted, confused as to what her existence actually entailed. The Westeros High Dragons had a team for guys and a team for girls; he knew she was on the girls team and he knew she was good. That was all. That was the one redeeming quality he could think of, no matter how hard he racked his menial thoughts. She could play football. It wasn't as if she had much of a personality (that he knew of, or would like to know of) and she was, to put it plainly (as the entirety of the Westeros High student body did) absurdly unattractive; gracelessly, toweringly tall; Brienne was probably shorter only than Gregor Clegane ('The Mountain that Plays' himself), and handled it with all the elegance of a rhinoceros. It seemed, in fact, that Brienne was so discomfited and so did not know how to handle her bulky heights, that she seemed to hunch inadvertently so as to be on a level with people, and seemed to occasionally trip over a muscled limb that she didn't know she had. It was ridiculous and it was pathetic, utilized only in football matches. It would probably have helped if she was pretty, Jaime thought – Lyanna Stark, Big Shot Brandon's little sister, though a skinny, beanstalk-tall thing, and co-captain of the girls' Dragons, was gorgeous, and that somehow detracted from her wild ways (not that Brienne had any wildness in her at all, save for on the pitch, so Jaime thought) and lofty length – but Brienne was just… Brienne. She kept her freckly face down under her short straw-coloured hair and that was probably a good thing. Brienne was shy and Brienne was not the most academically intelligent and Brienne had about two point one friends, and that made her so ridiculously far away from Jaime in every sense.

Except scientifically, apparently.

She was absurdly ungainly, Jaime observed with some fascination. And then felt Tully's hands clamp down on his shoulders. "As much as we all do so love gazing into space, Mr Lannister, I've given you some work to do. I suggest you get along with it."

"Yeah." Jaime muttered, shaking his blonde head and coughing conspicuously, flipping through the textbook. "'K."

"Yes _sir_, Mr Lannister."

"Well you don't have to call me sir." Jaime retorted, lounging back in his chair and splaying his arms wide, grinning boyishly at his friends from across the room. Ah, some enjoyment at last. Making teachers miserable – one of his more adept pastimes. At least this way the talk would be _'Jaime Lannister was hilarious in science this morning'_ rather than _'Jaime Lannister worked with the Tarth freak in science this morning'_ – and aggravating teachers seemed to take the pressure off of his academic capabilities, which weren't so impressive. He could be known as the funny one, or the annoying one, to teachers, rather than the stupid one.

Mr Tully sighed, continuing his leisurely stroll weaving through the two-student tables, bending over to correct a girl's work. "Detention, Lannister. My office. Immediately after school."

Jaime rolled his eyes for the benefit of his watching admirers, and sunk back down into his chair, flipping his biro around. And then the teacher's words truly registered and he sprung back up straight. "Sir, I can't, it's the first practise for the Dragons tonight, I have to train the new subs –"

"I will talk to Coach Selmy on your behalf, I am sure he will understand –"

With an over-the-top groan, Jaime flopped down onto the table, head in his arms, not looking at Brienne Tarth. Maybe he could devote this lesson to sleeping. God knows he needed it; Cersei woke him up at _six fifteen_ this morning, _six fifteen_, flinging open his door and raging about some crime he had allegedly committed against her precious hair products. And so the lesson passed in awkward silence and the murmurings of lab partners. In fact, Jaime did manage to nod off along the way – He'd get Brandon to get Catelyn to get that Baelish weirdo to do his work for him, he was supposed to be smart – and after waking five minutes before lessons' end, remembered he had a free period. Maybe being in close proximity to Brienne Tarth was just a god-awful start to a good day.

He rose with the bell's shrieking, reaching for his bag and slinging it over his shoulder, stabbing into his palm with the biro to wake himself up a little more, and dragging himself through the crushing flow of students out of the door, to freedom. He leant against the wall, running a hand through his hair to make some sort of order of the golden curls, and ramming his new textbook into the darkest depths of the backpack, and breathing in a sigh of relief beneath the stark fluorescence of electronic lighting. Free.

And then a rather large hand had grabbed his arm and spun him and he looked up and he wished he hadn't. Standing a good few inches over him, his new lab partner was sighing, eyes anxiously flickering around the crammed hallway. _Oh, Seven hells. What have I ever done?_

"Look," She began, staring thickly down at her overlarge feet, tongue darting out to lick nervously at her chapped lip, fiddling with the hem of her shirt. "I – well, I know it's not the… It isn't the most preferable of arrangements, right, but we have to work together on this because I said to Mr Tully that –"

"What are you trying to say, woman?" Jaime frowned at her stupid face.

"I'm no good at science and stuff, and he put me with you and he said that because we're all, a team now, half of my grade comes from whatever your grade is so –"

"So what? I don't know if you've noticed, _Brienne_, but I really could not care less."

Brienne's broad, freckly face flushed a bright and blotchy red. "I just thought that maybe being the son of the vice principal you'd maybe be okay with working a bit harder because I'm a bit of a disappointment grade-wise and this is my last chance because I really, I – you have to study, or I'll get punished for it. If you don't, I mean. Study?" She seemed herself uncertain of whatever babble was spurting clumsily from her mouth.

Jaime sighed and waved an impatient hand, utterly terrified that someone he knew might see him talking to Tarth. "Yeah, yeah, whatever, okay? Gods."

And he rounded the corner with the torrent of Westeros High students that flowed from lesson to lesson, now reduced to a trickle as the familiar shouts and laughs drifted into classrooms, and he muttered something under his breath about the crazy cow, as he made his way to the quad to the Dragons, preparing in his head how he could brush off his lab condemnation and divert attention away from his new connection with Brienne Tarth – and his detention. Even he had to admit, glaring down at his shoes, that detention the first day back was not good, even by his standards. And the last thing Jaime remembered before being swallowed up in cheers and claps and friendly punches, by the rest of the free-period-granted Dragons was, oddly, how Brienne Tarth's eyes were very, very blue.


	2. How Not To Deal With Your Man-Eating Sis

**The Adventures of Super Jock and Awkward Girl**

**A/N ~ **Braime makes me happy. Can you tell? Once more, don't reprimand me if I make any abnormal mistakes in the ways of American high schools; I'm English and all of this is taken from what I've learnt from the extensive watching of terrible clique-y television programmes. And again, the _coming up _stuff is hinting at subplots much later on. The primary focus is Braime. And I do have one spoiler… _Things will come to a head at prom._ Because stereotypes.

**Note**: Character ages from ASOIAF mean nada to me. I _know_ Tyrion is so much younger than the twins, I _know_ Brynden is _old_ and I _know_ Cat's older too. I _know_. I _know _I've aged up Brienne. I _know_, I've just decided to conveniently ignore facts for the purposes of your entertainment.

**Coming Up... **Cersei's subpar attempts to attract Rhaegar T, son of the principal and boyfriend of Lya Stark may or may not end in war, Teen Tyrion really is quite the wisecrack and Eddard Stark, may or may not have a crush on Cat Tully – making the situation with Brandon and Littlefinger into the world's first… love …square? **Find out in The Adventures of Super Jock and Awkward Girl!**

**2. How Not To Deal With Your Man-Eating Sister**

Slamming the door behind him, Jaime Lannister trudged into his house, enveloped in a cloud of perpetual annoyance. Shouting something about being home to Tyrion, his little brother (in more ways than one) who was (pretending to be) sick _the first freaking day of school_, he zeroed in immediately on the sweeping majesty of the fridge. Glorious invention. Just as Jaime was downing some semi-skimmed milk from the carton, leaning against the open fridge door, Tyrion came waddling into sight, a wry half-smirk curling at his lip. Smug bastard. Perhaps it was his unspoken shame of Tyrion's dwarfism that kept Tywin Lannister from forcing his youngest child into school on days he didn't want to go, because, Jaime thought, neither he nor Cersei would _ever_ be allowed to stay home with the excuse of a slight headache. Reverse favouritism.

"How was school, big brother?" Tyrion asked without caring, hopping up to sit on the kitchen table. "Throw me an apple."

"Terrible." Jaime replied, snorting, wiping the milk residue from his face with his sleeve, before taking off his hoodie and throwing it rather aggressively behind him. Tyrion glanced back at the crimson cloth, splayed across the floor, almost like a bloodstain or a dead body. Jaime glared into the well-stocked fridge, reaching for an apple at hurling it over his shoulder at his brother.

"Must have been. You nearly killed a coat. And a me, for that matter. What happened, if I dare ask?"

"I have to work with Brienne Tarth in science all year." He stated plainly, rummaging around in the fridge. Somehow hearing it put so simply, out loud, in his own voice made the matter even worse. What also didn't help was how Tyrion burst out into uncontrollable laughter, pointing a finger and leaning back in hysterics as he tore off parts of apple. "Thanks." Jaime muttered bitterly, settling on pulling a slab of cheese, regarding it and then stuffing it in his mouth.

"Oh, Jaime, oh, dear stupid Jaime," Tyrion grinned in that irritating little-brother way, hopping down from the scrubbed table and swaggering over to him, tossing the half-eaten apple from hand to hand, before clapping Jaime sympathetically on the shoulder. (Or as near to the shoulder as he could reach. That was the sentiment, anyway.) "How will she ever survive?"

"Shuaot uop!" Jaime grunted through a mouthful of cheese, swallowing and kicking at him, with a sigh. It was hardly a life-threatening situation, he'd decided after much (much, _much_) mental debate with himself on the walk home – barely even popularity-threatening, particularly if he managed to uphold his couldn't-care-less demeanour in science, which wasn't going to be hard, considering his general thoughts on the subject. No, so long as he pointedly complained of it loudly and regularly, every day, it'd be fine, in the long run of things. But a year was a long time. An hour of science a day, practically, was a long time. And what had Tarth said earlier? About extra studying, and her grade's influence on his grade…? The smallest part of his brain said to him that he really aught to have been listening. The more prominent argued that was absurd. He merely had to endure the lessons and the looks. That was all. "Laugh all you wand, little man, but it's horrible. I have to spend _time_ with her."

"Oh, yes, Jaime, such trials and tribulations. I'm sure you'll manage. It's her I'm worried for, choking on your excessive Lynx cloud every day, poor thing."

"Not funny, Tyrion. I know I'm kicking up a storm about this but I'm the Dragons' quarterback! She's… I don't know, she probably does _something_ aside from being a moping social reject and –"

"Who does?"

Jaime spun on his heels, still holding the cheese, and rolled his eyes, exasperated, slumping into yet another sigh, as his twin sister came gliding through the door, wreathed in her everlasting air of perfume and hormonal-girl evilness. She somehow thought it a supposed twin-right to nose around every aspect of his life. And just as he was opening his mouth for some kind of snarky retort, Tyrion had tossed his apple in the air, taken a bite and wandered back over. It was hardly a secret that his siblings despised one another more than life itself.

"Jaime has to do some kind of science project with Brienne Tarth and he's turned into an awful drama queen about it."

"Thanks, _Tyrion_," Jaime muttered, shoving him out of the way and pushing past Cersei to the porch, delving in his hastily-deposited backpack for his iPhone, and declaring his departure to his bedroom. Not, he thought, that anyone in this damned family had any sort of respect for privacy, and-or personal space. Just as he was tearing up the stairs, he heard Tyrion's amused shout of, _speaking for the rejects, I don't think she's too pleased about working with little big-head rich- boy hotshot, either._ Ugh.

Making his way into his continually untidy room, Jaime Lannister kicked off his trailing-laced Chucks and threw himself onto his double bed, a nest of stewing duvet and pillows, unmade from the morning, snatching for the remote to his flatscreen and flipping it on, discarding it for his Xbox control and his Call of Duty headset. Maybe things were going to look up for him; he could play some, with the guys, eat (_a lot_), and he was pretty sure (pre-timetable consultance) that he had no science lesson tomorrow. It wasn't like Brienne Tarth was his solitary reasoning for loathing the class; Hoster Tully taught with mundane unenthusiasm, and he was hardly… academic, in the first place.

When he and Cersei were younger, and his mother was alive, and Tyrion was barely a whisper on the wind, refraining from sending his golden twins to the horrors of _pre school_, their father, Tywin Lannister, had insisted on teaching them rudimentary alphabetical understanding, and the basic ability to count to fifty. Cersei could do so with basic skill and little interest after a while, but Jaime simply could not understand it. Letters and numbers were just weird shapes, they had no _meaning_ to the boy. Not like sports did, anyhow. The child was always out in the extensive acres of garden, tripping over soccer balls and charging around, declaring himself an international baseball player, with perpetually scuffed knees and grass-stained hands, with mud in his blonde curls. The little Jaime just did not understand why he needed to know how to read and how to count, when he was going to play _all_ the big-boy sports for a living. But his father had sat him down at the kitchen table _every day_, with paper and pen until he could read, and count, and write. Just not as well as some people.

Surprisingly little had changed, from then to now, with his sixteenth birthday fast approaching. He got by with schoolwork, pestering intelligent losers to do his work, and living happy in the assumption that a football scholarship was what would get him through college.

As the afternoon subsided into evening, Jaime Lannister was feeling considerably better; he'd found a half-eaten packet of crisps in his wardrobe and they weren't half bad, he'd kicked _ass_ on Call of Duty, and, he thought, scrolling through his Facebook feed whilst the alluring scent of spaghetti wafted up from downstairs through the crack under his door, the pictures of the new subs that Brandon Stark had posted looked promising. Jaime stretched out languidly against his pillows, scrolling and scrolling on the Apple netbook balanced across the knees of his jeans – designer and yet tearing; a prime example of how little he appreciated his family's extensive wealth – and then he noticed something on his feed that he really did not understand.

_Robert Baratheon is in a relationship with Cersei Lannister._

What?

He leaned forward, squinting a the screen, brushing back his blonde hair, and typed in his sister's name, clicking on her page. And yes, next to the 'friends' button, quite clearly – _In a relationship_. Frowning, eyes narrowed in confusion, Jaime leaned across the bed for his phone, resting dormant beneath his off-kilter lamp, and, for some reason, instead of actually _getting up off of the bed_ and going and talking to Cersei, in her room next to his, swiped the number to call his teammate. He picked up. Before Robbie Baratheon even had time to get out a lazy 'hey', Jaime was onto him, pure perplexed bewilderment. "Since when are you dating my sister?"

Silence. Some kind of crumpling. "Oh, what, sorry, I was eating a Mars Bar. Since she asked me out for Friday night over a text chat a hour or whatever ago." Chewing sounds. "Why?"

"No reason, um, I just saw it on Facebook. That was quick for a relationship declaration – you've barely spoken to each other. It's already a relationship and you've not even gone out? That's stupid."

He could just imagine Robert shrugging with that rowdy laugh of his over the other end of the line. "So? I know her, she knows me, we've spoken quite a bit, and she's pretty hot."

"Dude, no. That's my sister."

"No to me dating her or no to me calling her hot?"

"No to you calling her hot, Seven Hells, can we change the subject, _please_. Anyway, I thought you liked that Lyanna Stark?"

"Yeah, well, apparently she's _settled on the prince_. Bloody prince. Got to go. Bye." And the line clicked dead. Great. His sister and one of his best friends. Wonderful. Although, he thought, if he knew Cersei at all, she had some exterior motives for so suddenly making arrangements with a guy she'd never before shown any interest whatsoever in. He felt for Robert, truly he did - Jaime himself had never had a relationship (or a crush, for that matter) that lasted longer than a mento, but Robert had it _bad_ for the younger sister of his best friend, Ned. (Rob's best friend, that was. Somehow Jaime could not stand Eddard Stark, and vice versa.) He pitied him – Lyanna was stubbornly decided on Rhaegar Targaryen, son of the Principal Aerys T, and hence nicknamed 'the prince'. In a friendly way of course – Rhaegar was extremely attractive and extremely talented; co-captain of the guys Westeros Dragons, even if rumour whispered he was more committed to his band.

Either way, his sister was now dating his fellow Dragon, and Jaime sincerely doubted she wasn't just using him to achieve some means or the other. That was what Cersei – head cheerleader, unfortunately – did with relationships, what she viewed them as. Groaning, Jaime closed his netbook and pushed himself up off of the bed, opening the door regardless of its protestations, and going into Cersei's red and gold bedroom, in which she was sitting on her bed, with some kind of toe-separating apparatus in use, jabbering manically on her phone to some idiot or another.

"Cersei."

No response. She just glanced up at him and then back down at her wet, scarlet toenails, as if his existence meant nothing to her spectacular being.

"_Cersei_."

Nothing.

"Cersei, you witch."

Jaime lunged for a pillow, crowning the stack piled on the laundry basket by the door, pitching it with all his might at his twin, who gave a shrill shriek, hurled it rather viciously at her overstuffed, rather enormous walk-in wardrobe (which, Jaime noticed, had several new mirrors on it – apparently Cersei adored looking at herself a little bit more every day, a feat Jaime thought impossible.) Cersei muttered something into the phone, locked it and slammed it down on her bedside table.

"Do that again and I swear to the Seven I will strangle you in your sleep." His ever-charming sister hissed, cautiously examining her nails and glaring daggers at him with a deathly green gaze. If looks could kill – well, he'd have been dead in the womb. Apparently he was born holding her foot, and she was born glaring at him. Somehow it seemed plausible enough.

"Always a delight, Cersei. What's this about you going out with Robert Baratheon on Friday?"

"How subtle. You don't have to worry about your little friend – well, maybe I shouldn't say little, he does have a tendency to inflate a little around holidays – he'll get over it. He's merely phase one."

"Phase…?" Jaime struggled to comprehend the paradox that was his sister's mind. He often wondered, of late, whether the extensive collection of hair products she was so protective over, all of which named after some unreadable jungle nonsense or other, seeped through her skull and into her brain, affecting the part that served her better judgement. Namely, not attempting a diabolical self-serving plan every term.

"Well yes, in drawing Rhaegar Targaryen away from the Stark bitch."

She spoke so simply, so platonically about such retarded plans, Jaime noted with a sigh. He had begun to realize that perhaps Robert's heart being broken by his twin was no reason to get involved in her mental cheerleader schemes. "Of course, because that's going to happen."

"I'm prettier than her."

"And that's what matters."

"Get out."

"I thought you'd never ask."

Following an awkward family dinner, during which Tyrion and Cersei were at each others' throats (nothing out of the ordinary) and their father took an extended interest in their lives (completely out of the ordinary) (and terrifying) Jaime retired to his bedroom, playing some more Call of Duty, until the daylight yielded to night and ebbed away, and beyond his drawn blue curtains the stars hid behind the garden trees. When Tywin Lannister came in, poking his head around the door and surveying Jaime jumping around his bed, leaning forth and jerking a controller around, yelling profanities into the headset, he gave him until eleven to stay awake.

So when Jaime Lannister glanced at his bedside digi-clock that read _00:27_, he decided it was time to turn the game off, and check his Facebook feed one last time for any updates. And in fact, one caught his eye – from Prince Rhaegar T himself, a status update and an event created, with near everyone added to it.

_**Rhaegar Targaryen**__ created the event: __**Halloween party at mine, **_21:30-?

_I've been meaning to throw a get-together for a while now, and Halloween is the nearest holiday. Dad's away end of this month, and here all of October so… month-early Halloween? Fancy dress optional._

Jaime scrolled down the list of his Facebook friends invited to the party – the Dragons, the cheerleaders, even creeps or losers, like Petyr 'Littlefinger' Baelish and his own brother, Tyrion. In some odd way, he respected Rhaegar for having the courage to be seen fraternizing with those not quite on his ring of popularity – then again, most were not quite _his ring of popularity_. But _Littlefinger Baelish?_ Huh. He'd have to see if he was free on the settled date. Rhaegar threw legendary parties.

If Robert Baratheon and his sister turned up in some god-awful couples costume he'd kill himself.

Jaime sighed, clicking off his iPad, kicking his netbook under the bed and lying back, staring at the ceiling. Vestiges of blue-tac from back when the ceiling had been stuck speckled with glow-in-the-dark stars and planets returned his gaze. Somehow he couldn't sleep. The first day back at school after the summer holidays was always bound to be more uncomfortable than usual, but somehow this day had surpassed even that. As he drifted to sleep, a distorted soup of imaged taunted his subconscious mind; Coach Selmy, totally pissed off at him for getting a detention and missing practise, hundreds of footballs slamming into him; Robert and Cersei drunk and wearing matching costumes that dripped red as Cersei and Lyanna Stark hit at each other with wooden swords, and Rhaegar T elongating and contorting until he was a dragon, a dragon with silvery scales and purple eyes, and then the eyes were taking over, and they were everything but Jaime in a black and white land, and then they were blue, abnormally, fantastically blue like Brienne Tarth's, and then the blue was the ocean, and he was drowning, drowning, drowning. Struggling to keep afloat whilst Tyrion lounged around on a floating driftwood slab, just big enough for a teenaged dwarf. He woke up just as the azure flow was filling his lungs, slightly concerned about himself.

Then he checked the time. _6:54_.

Could a man _never_ get any sleep these days?


	3. Libraries Are No Football Pitch

**The Adventures of Jock Boy And Awkward Girl**

**A/N ~ **I do apologise for the lack of Braime in the last chapter, aside from that one last part of Jaime's dream. This chapter should hopefully make up for it, tenfold. Have no fear! Also, I'm testing the introducing of a system in which if you give me a review with _any feedback whatsoever_, including constructive criticism, I'll DM you a spoiler. The longer the review, the longer the spoiler, though most will average about five sentences. If you're interested in this, in your review, after the context, add _**reviews for more Braime**_!

**Coming Up… **Jaime throws himself some pity-parties for loosing his mommy, which are attended by nobody but himself, Lysa Tully is really quite weird and rather annoying all around, everybody could not care less about Cersei's fuming, and Walder Frey is a batty old librarian. **Find out more in The Adventures of Jock Boy and Awkward Girl!**

**3. Libraries are No Football Pitch (He Probably Should Have Guessed)**

The Dreaded Friday soon came around quicker than Jaime Lannister had expected, really.

So referred to by blame of; A, his twin sister going on her date with one of his best mates, purely in a determined and deranged attempt to make Rhaegar Targaryen jealous (and Jaime had heard it all – Cersei had actually planned said date to coincide with Rhaegar's date with Lyanna. She didn't quite seem to understand that not every male specimen on the planet was attracted to her.) and B, a _double _science class to be dreaded all around, in containing (expected) actual hard work, and Brienne Tarth and her blue eyes.

On a brighter note; Tyrion had given him an answer sheet for his nearest science test (Tyrion, being Tyrion, was studying college-level stuff, despite being fourteen.) in one of their rare yet precious moments of brotherly bonding, and Jaime didn't doubt that Tyrion was correct in the majority of his answers – Tyrion was exceedingly intelligent and rather too adept at the sciences. He was pretty sure he had the answers memorized, and on a brighter brighter note, Arthur Dayne and Bryndon 'Blackfish' and a bunch of other Westeros Dragons were going out tonight, and that promised to rouse his spirits after his last lesson of the day; said double science.

The day flew, each hour-long lesson brushing past him without him caring at all, and, unfortunately, lunch hurling past in a mere matter of seconds. All culminating in his countdown to gazing into space whilst Mr. Hoster Tully droned on about sounds and nonsense that he simply could _not_ comprehend, no matter how hard he tried. So, whilst he lounged against the wall outside of the science room, waiting for the teacher to open up, with the rest of the class, making sure he looked suitably dazzlingly attractive, and loudly and clearly taking the piss out of Littlefinger Baelish and Lysa Tully (Catelyn's weedy little sister) as the year-younger outcasts traipsed around, Baelish staring intently at Cat Tully.

"Don't be swayed, Cat – it's not just his finger that's little." Jaime taunted, grinning widely as the fellow Dragons laughed and joined in. Catelyn herself refrained from taking part, although made no move to stop it.

"Ah, Mr. Lannister. Finding a new way to occupy your time rather than stealing pencils from my library? I'd suggest you stop your harassment of poor Mr. Baelish here and find something useful to do with your time, lest it be said you –"

"O_kay_, Mr Frey."

He addressed his accuser, Mr Walder Frey, part-time assisting librarian at Westeros High, a weasel-faced and rather senile old man with a brain like a bag of cats, and who had taken it upon himself to harbour a grudge against Jaime and lay him to blame for anything that took a detour in his life. Including the mysterious disappearance of many a pencil from the library desk, for some bizarre reasoning. Jaime had set foot in the library about twice in his time at Westeros High. One of which was by accident. By this point, Lysa and Petyr had scurried along to their own lessons, sharpish.

"Don't interrupt me, boy. Anyway, your wonderful teacher Mr Tully – you are Tully's science class, are you not? – has given me leave borrow one or two of you for an hour or so to help sort out my library, it appears some little group of friends thought it awfully amusing to come and obliterate one of my bookshelves…"

Jaime had stopped paying attention long ago, and had instead resorted back to amusing mutterings amongst he and Meryn and Robert, until he realized what was being offered up around him – this was a chance to leave Brienne Tarth and incomprehensible scientific nonsense behind for – well, however long it took him to organize a shelf, was it, that he'd said? He really needed to start listening (or not, the more rational part of his brain argued). "I'll do it," Jaime had declared, masking his gratitude toward the mad old man with boredom and resignment rolling around his tone.

What he did not bargain on was, at precisely the same time, Brienne Tarth, somewhere down the hallway, stepping foreward, head down, and volunteering herself. Wow. Somewhere, the fates were laughing in malice – apparently, they really had it in for him these days.

"Kidding, of course, I'll just step back over here –" Jaime gave his most charming (albeit rather flustered and furious) smile, sidling closer into the crush of his friends. Apparently Walder Frey was either suddenly, conveniently half-deaf, or pretending to be for the sole purpose of torturing him more. _Great, just great. _He wondered if this was all because he occasionally skipped church as a child (back when their mother was alive, and they actually went to church).

And so it was, that Jaime found himself trailing grouchily after _Walder Frey_ and _Brienne freaking Tarth_, whilst his supposed friends glanced after him in hysterics, flowing into the classroom, out of his sight. Just great. His day grew increasingly shitty. Now what had he condemned himself to? Okay, they'd be no incomprehensible blabber about this chemical and that chemical (whatever that chemical actually _was_) and yet somehow arranging _books_ of all things (it was common talk amongst the tiny sliver of loserish students who despised him - purely out of jealousy, of course - that he was near illiterate – but, he thought, in his defence, he was no Gregor Clegane) , bloody _books_ with _Brienne Tarth_, whose entire being was just pointless, with _Walder Frey_ snapping at them about goldfish and pastries and god knows what other crazed ramblings of a deranged elderly lunatic.

By the time they reached the library, Jaime was repeatedly banging his head against the wall in hopes of smashing his face in and hence not being able to fulfil the whims of a crazy person. Huh – smashing the face he was so aware and so proud of. He must be in hell.

"Well go on, then," Frey sneered, settling behind his desk and steepling his fingers (Jaime was uncomfortably reminded of his father, who did that quite a lot) (it was more than a bit unnerving), nodding Jaime and Brienne toward what looked like a small earthquake's wake. Some unruly delinquents (possibly long-expelled) had clearly laid waste to a section of shelves, books torn down and scattered. Any 'injured' books were to be disposed of, and _they'd better both know the alphabet, or the Stranger take them both_.

So, sighing heartily, Jaime Lannister got to his knees and set about gathering up battered volumes, groaning theatrically every so often, so as to make sure both Brienne and Walder knew how much he despised this. After what Jaime guessed to be about an hour, Frey had wandered off under the excuse of 'fresh air' to torment some poor freshman, leaving the silence to crush down on them both. The type of screaming, pulsing silence that weightens the air with such tangible horror that anyone would squirm in discomfort. Jaime pulled his phone quickly from his pocket and clicked to unlock it. Twelve minutes had passed. He slid it back away.

Brienne Tarth had been re-shelving books more quickly and efficiently than he, hunching behind her indomitable shell of silence and resolutely avoiding looking at him. When, accidentally, Jaime caught her eye, she glared softly and turned back to the books, to the shelf, to the books, to the shelf, precise and as irritated as he. And for some reason unfathomable even to himself, the words came from his mouth before he; A, knew why, or B, could stop them. "I get the feeling you really can't stand me." He was thankful there was nobody else around.

Brienne did not look up at him, nor did she have the common courtesy to address him as a present human being. For a while she looked as if she were maybe considering what to say, and then thought better of it. It became evident that she had no intention of acknowledging his existence any time soon when she didn't reply in – he checked his phone – eleven minutes. Assuming they had until the end of the school day, well over an hour, left and Frey didn't seem to be intent on returning any time soon, Jaime lay back against a shelf, crossing his legs and his arms folded beneath his head. Brienne did not protest or even look, doggedly avoiding contact, just kept on mechanically replacing the books to their shelves. She was a strange sort of being, he thought to himself; she seemed not to admire him or fear him – the two reactions Jaime was most used to receiving. Jaime watched her eyes - Jaime knew how to read a person's eyes, and for that Jaime was used to knowing how said people felt (which gave him a rather helpful upper hand when attempting to either talk to or – more likely - ridicule said people.) Brienne's eyes were unreadable. _Pretty eyes_, he thought, _and calm. Determined._

He strongly suspected that determination was more to do with being determined not to make contact with him rather than being determined to stack bookshelves. She reminded him of Tyrion in an odd way, though at a first glance two such souls would be considered so, so different.

"Opting for the _strong and silent_ appeal then, I'm gathering?" Jaime mused aloud, purely intent on amusing himself now; no doubt she would again staunchly ignore him entirely. In an odd way, he realized, this was more boring than science class, but altogether more enjoyable due to a lack of science. Sighing and making a big show of rolling his eyes, Jamie reached for his phone again, opening up Fruit Ninja and setting it to arcade mode. _Well, I have abandoned Books With Brienne quickly, haven't I? This might be a new record for a task given up on so soon, even for me._ Still, near laughing at his own thoughts (yes, that was how dull he reviewed all of this), he sliced at the imaginary fruit, yelling at the collections of pixels and putting the phone down once more, realizing he should conserve the already meagre battery if he was to be stuck here until ten past three. Sighing and shifting, Jaime Lannister reached for the book behind him, opened it to read a passage, and immediately tossed it aside, much to a look of disgust from Brienne. He couldn't imagine how anyone could voluntarily spend their time reading and enjoy it – Tyrion was a paradox of his own to Jaime. (Tyrion could waste days just staring at pages.) (And he became quite angry when Jaime took said books and floated them down the stream at the end of the garden as boats for his toy soldiers) (Although they were children when _that _particular incident happened) (Really, Tyrion, the baby of the Lannisters, grew up a long time before Jaime did.)

Either way, the golden-haired quarterback studied the awkwardly overgrown creature as she sorted the volumes with their cracking spines and limp pages, like broken bodies on the bloodied stage of battle's aftermath. Brienne Tarth was dull, but she was stubborn, more so than he, even, he'd give her that. "You're really not even going to give me a chance, are you?" He settled back more comfortably. He tired of this tediousness. "Has anyone ever told you you're as boring as you are ugly?"

"Has anyone ever told you you're head's as empty as it is large?" She parried, near immediately, still stubbornly resisting raising those blue eyes to him, swapping this book for that. "Be quiet." Ooh. He must have hit a nerve, getting her to _speak _to him. Dear lord. (Though a tiny portion of Lannister inwardly flinched at that. A little part of him, the part that got so awfully upset when a character died on _The Walking Dead_, the part that _felt_ for things, supposed that she'd not gone a day of her life without at least one person telling her she was dreary and unsightly, whereas few people dared to insult him. She'd have a thicker skin than he would.) (That was the part he continually suppressed, as he did now.)

"Ouch. So it does speak, then. I was beginning to think you were a mute."

No response. It figured. He withdrew the iPhone from his jeans pocket again. They had a good forty-five, fifty minutes until freedom, and if Frey returned before then he'd have to actually pitch in and… horrifying as it was… _help_. Jaime opened up his games folder, and played a few rounds of Flappy Bird, managing somehow to score four (his high score was forty-three). He offered the app out to her. "Game?" For a few moments he thought she was going back to denying his existence, but then a tight _no_ came to decline the overly generous offer he wasn't sure why he was making.

"Well, why ever not?" Jaime pressed, tone slightly mocking, somehow. Somehow, mockery found its way into his tone no matter what he was saying, or to who. He noted that the way Brienne moved, so awkwardly, almost as if she had no clue how to handle herself, with none of the easy grace of the other female Dragons, Lya Stark or Dacey 'The She-Bear' Mormont; a trait only emphasized by the (obviously) male-intended jeans and enormous jumper she hid herself in. It was quite fascinating, really.

"Because I told Frey that I'd restock his shelves, and that's what I mean to do." She sounded tired, as if talking to him was more effort than it was worth.

Jaime laughed out loud, and cruelly, too. It was so rare to find someone of their age stupid enough to still believe in keeping to their promises, or intentions, that it had actually become nigh on hilarious. And funnily enough, that was what drew her out of herself.

For the first time – he thought, the first time _ever_ – Brienne _(freaking) _Tarth properly looked at him, and for the first time – he thought, the first time _ever_ – Jaime _(golden boy) _Lannister did not know how to read a person, how to play a person. And her eyes were right on his, and they seemed far to wise for his liking, and too astonishingly blue, too; too pretty that they were out of place on her. Surely such eyes belonged to someone else, some other girl, some proper girl with a proper girl face and a proper personality – and yet when they stared at him with a sort of stunned, and unbelieving loathing (was it? By this point he was entirely unsure, but everything else suggested loathing) they felt…

_Seven bloody buggering hells, Walder Frey's condemnations have actually driven me mad._

He stood up, all arrogance again, with a toss of his golden hair and an exaggerated roll of his green eyes, with his mocking grin back, unaffected and ordinary, lounging against a bookshelf. "I'll leave you to it then, shall I? It's better suited to you."

And he left her fuming on the floor, surrounded by books, for Tully's sciences and cruel jokes on crumpled papers thrown friend to friend. That was what he did. That was him. So why did he feel the most diminutive sliver of guilt?


	4. We Should Fight Crime

**The Adventures of Super Jock and Awkward Girl**

**A/N ~ **I'm such a tease, I know, I know, patience, my lovelies. I sounded a bit creepy then, didn't I? Whoops. Additionally, the **coming up**s now feature what's going down in the chapter. Again, do not reprimand me on ages or American cultural fails; I'm English, and I've ignored ages when convenient. Yay! Also, remember - I'm introducing a system in which if you give me a review with _any feedback whatsoever_, including constructive criticism, I'll DM you a spoiler. The longer the review, the longer the spoiler, though most will average about five sentences. If you're interested in this, in your review, after the context, add **_reviews for more Braime_**.

This is a filler and it's shit and I'm sorry woops.

**Coming Up… **Date night goes atrociously wrong, ketchup-faced Cersei slams several doors, Golden Child and Mini Man dig up dirt on everyone, and Lysa Tully enters the fray at the Stark-Tully-Baelish-Stark love cube – indeed making it a _love pentagon_. **Find out in The Adventures of Super Jock and Awkward Girl!**

**4. ****In Which Tyrion And Jaime Turn Super Sleuth (We Should Fight Crime)**

"Oh, yes Robert, you are _so_ funny."

His sister's words were so hollow that they bordered on mockery; Jaime Lannister was yet to understand how his football teammate could be so _stupid_ so as not to see it, or hear it. From where he and the guys were sat, in a booth across the back wall, they could quite clearly survey all that was going on around the primarily Westeros-High-dominated restaurant. His twin sister was smiling and simpering at Robbie B, making all the right noises and offering him tastes of her food (the Gods knew Robert loved his food more than any girl. Jaime never had that problem – he loved himself more than any girl.) but the boredom in her sparkling green gaze was laughable, and the stiffness, the falseness in her tone. Cersei's show was so absurdly rehearsed that it _had_ to be for the amusement of the others sitting around – because Cersei was a _good_ actress, god knew Jaime'd seen her play many a guy with Oscar-award-winning performance - or perhaps a pathetic plea to Rhaegar (sitting across the other side of the restaurant with Lyanna Stark. Number of times looked at Cersei since she arrived: zero.) to save her from Robert's dreariness. In which case, his twin was even more deluded than he thought.

And, what Arthur 'Goalie of the Morning' Dayne pointed out, made it even more hilarious, was the fact that while Cersei frequently stole glances at Rhaegar, Robert was perpetually and dazedly gawking at Lyanna, whilst Lya and Gar laughed and flirted and, in Lya's case, (because she was Lya,) threw food at one another. Cersei and Robert were a couple purely out to drool over the halves of another couple.

Squashed (rather too close for comfort, Jaime Lannister thought, although all good-naturedly) into the booth with him were Brandon and Catelyn, and Brandon's brother (Eddard, not Benjen, and the Stark Jaime had the least patience with. He was just to _good_.), Jorah and Maege Mormont, Illyn Payne, Boros 'Bone Breaker' Blout, Arthur and Ashara Dayne, Ashara's friend Elia, and Meryn Trant. Needless to say that the table was all too crowded with jostling plates and glasses. Their poor waitress nearly had a fit when they rolled off their orders. (_But, _Jaime thought, _it was okay. Theirs was, after all, The Cool Table_.)

What did make everything a deal more awkward was how Elia (Martell?) had to suppress fits of giggles each time he _looked_ at her, let alone spoke to her; Eddard Stark was staring dreamily at his big brother's girlfriend, Littlefinger-style; Ashara Dayne was staring dreamily at Eddard himself, and though Brandon remained happily ignorant, Catelyn herself seemed very much aware of Ned. And, at the next table along, the loser gang from the year below also stared (just as dreamily) at them, and at one another – Littlefinger Baelish at Cat, Lysa Tully at Baelish, Barbrey (Dustin?) at Brandon Stark (who was her ex-boyfriend) and glaring Cersei-worth daggers at Cat, whom Brandon had his arm around; and Howland Reed at Lyanna Stark across the room (he and Robert, Jaime reflected, could start a club. The _I Love Lyanna _Gang. Sounded promising).

And Jaime, being Jaime, was the only one to be able to read all of this rather confusing web of crushes. Idiots – they should all just learn to love themselves more than anyone else, like he did, and things would be far less complicated.

After a while of good-natured banter, Jaime excused himself to go to the men's room – and, to his horror, when he returned, another table, near to the door, was filled with un-coat-ing Westeros High kids. _Oh, bloody freaking brilliant. _He didn't understand what malicious joke the fates were repeatedly playing on him and Brienne Tarth, he didn't quite want to believe it – but no, there the thing herself was, with Robert's brother (Renly, the youngest one, not Stannis. Jaime could tolerate silly, camp Renly, just about – Stannis he could not; Stannis knew neither how to have fun or how to smile, despite having one of the hottest girlfriends – Melisandre _wordhecouldn'tpronounce_ from _wordhecouldn'tpronounce _– in the history of, like, anything, ever), a Westeros Dragons trial reserve who Jaime was nearly almost sure was called Hyle Hunt, Illyn Payne's idiot younger cousin Pod, and some others he did not know. _Why here, of all places, why her?_

He was beginning to think that this was some kind of prolonged _Punk'd _trick.

Although, everyone at said table, who had clearly just arrived, judging by the amount of scarf-unwinding going on, and the untouched menus, thankfully, did not see him. And if they did, well, he expected Brienne would go on ignoring him, which suited him perfectly. For that he thanked the gods, even if they'd not been particularly kind to him recently. (And by _particularly kind_, yes, he did mean _evil douchebags._ Then again, he realized, maybe it was that kind of thinking that had them damning him to Brienne Tarth in the first place.)

Slowly, head down beneath his golden curls, Jaime Lannister measured his steps and deliberately looked away as he made his way back to his table, and, somehow, against all his luck had taught him, not one of them had noticed him, and he was able to slip back in against the wall, past Brandon and Cat. Jaime Lannister, however, was hence preoccupied the entire rest-of meal, attempting not to shoot nervous – no, bollocks, Jaime Lannister did _not_ get nervous – glances at Renly's table, just to make sure he'd not been noticed by Tarth. (He was hardly scared of being seen. He was just scared of always overly-friendly Renly waving him over to say hello, and then, maybe once he'd gone, Brienne explaining her sullenness – though she was always stupidly sullen – and how he'd actually attempted to engage her in conversation early that very day. When word got out about _that_ particular mistake, _that _was when his golden reputation was torn to tatters and dragged through the mud.)

An hour or so later, when the sauce-stained plates had been cleared away, and those on the Table of Doom had just been granted theirs, Jaime decided it was a prime time to slip casually away, and as he announced it, he grew increasingly concerned about certain friends and their overloud parting words, and then more so concerned about the fact that Renly and co. were sitting _right_ next to the _only damned door_.

"Right, right, right. Anyway, folks, as much as I do so hate to leave you without the best and most attractive one of the group, I will see you on Monday."

"Aren't you going to meet up with the rest of us this weekend, then? We have to train, we have a game coming up." Arthur Dayne complained.

Well, wonderful – on top of everything else, he now had to admit to himself his ghastly promise of a weekend from hell. Why did things always seem so much worse when declared aloud, in one's own voice? "No can do. I have family coming down from Casterly." Oh right, because that was almost like admitting it was true. Not that Jaime hated the family as much as Cersei, but there was only so much time a person could spend with Uncle Kevan before dropping dead from boredom. Uncle Kevan, by this point, was even more deadly dull and dreary than Brienne Tedious Freaking Tarth. And you had to have a certain amount of energy to be around Aunt Genna for too long (and to be frank, if you had talked to Kevan Lannister beforehand, you would have had _no_ energy whatsoever.)

His friends offered up pitiful condolences, that simply darkened his mood further. Jaime accepted them all and swung his coat on, head doggedly down, glaring into his Timberlands and he strode in a storm of self-pity (well, nobody else seemed to be giving him any) (which wasn't at all fair) (he was just a poor little rich boy with a silly family and a dead mother – just because he was popular and famously good-looking and talented at football, and had everything he could possibly need, why should his trivial tribulations get their pity?), to the door, swinging it rather harshly open.

And just as he was half-out into the September winds, he heard the cheery shout that sunk his heart to his stomach and signalled his everlasting doom.

"Jaime!"

He didn't turn around (which, the teeny feelsy part of his brain decided, was just to spite himself, which was stupid, because he now had all manners of leave blowing into his face and hair, and the back of his coat still inside the warmth of the restaurant), just winced into the wild winds. "Yes, hello, Renly."

"Well what're you doing out in the cold like that, come and talk _properly_ you blonde-haired twat!" Renly had clearly been spending too much time with Robert.

"No, no, I'm good." He heard Renly B's laugh, and decided, no matter how awkward things might be _not_ to go back in. This was the most graceless way he'd ever handled anything in his life. (Dear god. Was this what it was like to be other people? How did they _take it_?) "Bye, Renly." And with that, convincing himself that he was by all means _not_ embarrassed and hence _not_ flushing bright pink, Jaime took off walking briskly against the bitingly cold autumn air.

When he returned home, Tyrion was back from his chess club (honestly, how did Tyrion not get beaten up more often?) and Jaime found him lounging around on the plush leather sofa, scrolling down on a silvery Apple netbook – no wait, _his_ silvery Apple netbook. What was wrong with the world these days, honestly? (So much, Jaime thought tragically; so much.) "Give the laptop back." He demanded of his younger brother.

Tyrion merely held up a hand as if to silence him, mismatched eyes narrowing as he frowned, half-amused and half-perplexed, at Jaime's screen. Sighing, and cursing the gods for granting him one depraved (and possible mentally unstable) sibling, and another who was perpetually unpredicatable, Jaime trudged forth to where Tyrion had his gadget balanced across his knees, clicking away. He held his hand out. "Tyrion."

"Just a _moment_, dear brother, I am uncovering some delightful dirt and unravelling some wonderful information to hold over peoples' heads should they get themselves into an argument with me. And technically it's a netbook."

"Fine. Hand over the _netbook_."

"Ask nicely."

"Hand over the netbook _please_, little man."

"No."

Jaime rolled his eyes. "_Tyrion_." Making his way to crawling around and throwing himself down next to his brother, he leaned in, frowning at _his_ screen. Facebook was opened in the prominent tab, the other tabs declaring – he squinted – the Westeros High School website, and some sort of American football championship rules in the final tab. What on earth was Tyrion doing? (But then again, what was Tyrion _ever_ doing?) He seemed entirely unfazed by Jaime's apparition beside him, indicating he had little shame for whoever he was stalking.

"Tyrion, what are you doing?"

Tyrion, eyes fixed firmly on his scrolling, switching form tab to tab, neglected to look up. (Perhaps that was why he related Tyrion to Brienne Tarth – they both had the irritating, out-of-the-ordinary nerve to flat-out ignore him.) (It was really quite aggravating.) (Not for the first time that day, Jaime wondered how other people coped.)

"I am _digging_." Tyrion murmured, still staring at the alternating websites.

"Digging what?"

At that moment, Cersei Lannister chose to fling the back door open with all her might, wrenching the thing very nearly off of it's hinges, fuming, furious, thick, golden hair for _once_ not unexplainably perfect (Jaime marked that with triumph), eyes wild. There was also something that looked suspiciously like tomato ketchup speckling her right cheek. Tyrion burst out laughing, leaning back in hysterics; Cersei's deathly, seething glower could did not even silence him. Jaime quirked an eyebrow in query.

"I swear to every damnable god there is, I am going to _kill_ Lyanna fucking Stark one day." His ever-amiable twin spat, with a snarl and a terrifyingly enraged growl. Then she tore up the staircase, and her livid footfalls echoed so stridently through the house, Jaime thought he'd go deaf. Tyrion, still snorting, turned to him, and, exchanging a look, the Lannister brothers fell about laughing. After a while, Jaime nodded toward Facebook. "Check what happened?"

"Check what happened." Tyrion confirmed, searching for Lyanna Stark's page. Her latest status update read; _Ketchup, I have proven, can be used as a weapon. Shame on all you idiots who tried to convince me it couldn't._ Which said nothing. Rhaegar hadn't posted anything since the party declaration, and Robert Baratheon's page gave nothing away. Which set a diabolical, Cersei-standard plan unfurling in Jaime's malevolent mind (Well, in his defence, he did share an awful lot of genetics with Cersei.) as he snatched the netbook away from Tyrion, pulling it onto his lap, and logging out of Tyrion's page. When Tyrion leaned over to see what he was doing, Jaime's hushed answer was that of; "_I know Cersei's password."_

If anything had gone down between Lya Stark and Cersei, Rhaegar was exactly the sort of person who would message Cersei to apologise and _let her fall gently_. There was the added complication of Cersei logging on and becoming confused as to why a new message was marked read, but to hell with sensibilities. "Well, I'd always thought it'd be easy to guess," Tyrion mused. "Probably something like _ilovemyself111 _or _cerseiisbetterthanyou123._"

"No, no," Jaime murmured, typing Cersei's email in. "I was ransacking her bedroom for tissues a few months ago and I found a book with her passwords in – one moment…" Glancing once at the ceiling, as if Cersei could magically see through the floor (that would be just like Cersei, to ruin one of his plans), and then back at the screen, he lowered his gaze to the keyboard, clicked the password box. _Joannalanna. _(The more considerate part of his brain considered Cersei's using their mother's name as a password a clue to her more humane side.)

And he clicked _Log In._

And he was in.

Tyrion whooped and held up a hand for a high-five; Jaime slapped his palm, but hushed him – Cersei could hear and return at any moment, and the odds were that she would _not_ be in a good mood. (Then again, when was she _ever_ in a good mood?) Jaime saw, with an exchanged glance of sheer shared delight with Tyrion, that she had three new messages. And when he clicked on them, the top one was, indeed, from Rhaegar Targaryen. He nodded at his brother. "Do the honours, Mini Man?"

"But of course, Golden Child." Tyrion took the netbook and began reading, in a soft, movie-esque dramatic voice, a parody of the Prince's own. "_'Cersei, look, about earlier – I'm so sorry. I understand you've perhaps had feelings for me for quite some time, and I do not wish to lead you on or hurt your feelings, but I do not, and cannot see in the foreseeable future, my returning your affections'._" Jaime snorted.( Who _spoke_ like that?) "'_Robert Baratheon is lucky to have you; however little I know you, I'm sure you're a wonderful person –' _That he would say that just proves how little he does know her." Tyrion went on, grinning like a child in a toyshop. "'_- It's not going to happen, Cersei, and I am so sorry. But that is absolutely no reason to express any disappointment or resentment you may harbour towards me on Lyanna. I admit she was probably wrong to flick that tomato sauce at you once you'd leaned in – but that was a reflex. I would probably have done the same if I had not been so confused and shocked, so bear her no ill will. She is none of your concern, no matter how crazy she can get sometimes. And I will say this now, on her behalf, purely out of middle grounded resolvement – she took absolutely none of your insults to heart. I hope you do not take any of hers. Sincerest apologies. I hope we can be friends._' This, Jaime, is priceless platinum."

"So Cersei tried to kiss Rhaegar and Lyanna attacked her with ketchup?"

"And then they fought a bit, from what I'm gathering." Tyrion beamed, passing the slender laptop back towards it's rightful owner.

Jaime snorted. "You know, Tyrion," He went on, "I'm beginning to discover a newfound respect for Lya Stark."

"Aren't we all?" Tyrion grinned. "Aren't we all? And speaking of Starks…" He reached again for the netbook, logged off of Cersei's account and back into his. "I have uncovered the most priceless piece of gossip there is."

"Who are you, Spider Varys?" Jaime grinned, good-naturedly. Varys 'The Spider' was in the year above, and the biggest, best gossip in school, hence, reporter-photographer for the Westeros High Newspaper. It was rumoured that nobody had any secrets from him and his little birds – Jaime doubted _that_, but he respected the guy purely out of concern that he knew something off about him himself. Jaime also knew that Tyrion, too, liked to have all possible information about all possible foes; suffering from dwarfism in a public high school was almost like standing under a continually flashing neon sign declaring him bait. But Tyrion was Tyrion, and could hence smoothly talk his way out of any argument, more likely earning a laughing crowd along the way – and to keep a hold on the upper hand for arguments' sake, Tyrion needed dirt that he could hint at, and possibly blackmail his enemies with. "Go on."

"Have you ever heard of a love pentagon?"

Jamie snorted once more. "Excuse me?"

"It's like a love triangle but with five people. Don't fear yourself insolent – they may be the first one."

"Who?"

Tyrion took a deep breath. "Brandon Stark is dating Cat Tully, who may or may not like his brother, the holy Ned, who _clearly_, from what information I've got here, likes Cat. Petyr 'Littlefinger' Baelish is also madly in love with poor overly-adored Catelyn here, _and_ unfortunately, Cat's rather less pretty, less intelligent little sister, Lysa, has fallen for the non-existant charms of Baelish. Pentagon."

Jaime, in considerably higher spirits than he'd been all week, silently thanked the universe for his wonderfully sneaky little brother – as much as they quarrelled, he didn't quite know what he'd do without him, particularly as he always managed to provide some cheering information when Jaime was down. "Golden Child and Mini Man." Jaime mused aloud thoughtfully. "We should fight crime." And with that, he turned, near bouncing across the room in jubilance, preparing to maybe play some Final Fantasy. Tyrion's amused little voice stopped him as his hand was on the knob to the staircase's hallway.

"Oh, and there's something that'll please you even more!" Tyrion called. Jaime, however much he loved to hear his classmates secrets from Tyrion's Sherlock-style deductions, doubted he'd be more relieved to be normally, airheadedly happy than he already was. He turned his head toward his brother, nodding him to continue.

"Your new lab partner is almost probably very straight for a very gay Baratheon."

Tyrion seemed to be waiting for Jaime to laugh – which he did, if a bit indifferently. As Jaime stared at his feet flying up the stairs, he wondered why on earth he wasn't in hysterics. He despised Brienne Tarth even more since he'd spent time with her, that much was very clear to him on every level, and hence the prospect of her liking the clearly gay Renly should have delighted him to no malicious end. A dozen cruel jokes he could taunt her with next science lesson came into his head, each one worse than the last.

Jaime found it utterly baffling, and completely unfathomable as to why, in the _smallest_ part of him - he just felt bad for her.


	5. Families (And More Zoology)

**The Adventures of Super Jock and Awkward Girl**

A/N ~ The Lannisters are such a screwed up family, god. And just as a warning; No, I will not be writing incest, no, no, nope. But I did realize something about the incest in ASOIAF, and Jaime's mentality – he's so often said that 'if he were a woman he'd be Cersei' and how Cersei is his identical twin – his only ever being with Cersei symbolizes the fact that he only ever loved himself, and him loving her was only ever about how he loved himself – and how after Brienne delivers him back to Kings Landing, there's the distance between he and Cersei, and that's all about Brienne teaching him that he's not such a great guy, and he shouldn't love himself so much – and of course the fact that by that point he is incredibly in love with her c: In other news I want to be Gwendoline Christie when I grow up, and I fangirl as I write the later chapters. Oh, I do feel like such a Sansa sometimes.  
Also, I know this is possibly the weakest chapter yet but the next few chapters are freaking awesome.  
Also… Since I've just started on this account (the old one was hacked and deleted and ughh), I'm yet unable to reply to reviews. Thank you to all who read and enjoyed; you've made my day!  
Coming Up… Genna Lannister is really very inappropriate, Jaime bums himself out in a fit of teenage angst, Cersei slams even more doors, and Tyrion goes for a reluctant pep rally – oh, and gets a girlfriend before Jaime, but we're not talking about that. In other news, a nearing football game turns the hottest quarterback into a right batty old man. Find out in The Adventures of Super Jock and Awkward Girl!

**5. Families and More Zoology**

Jaime Lannister was awakened from a heavy (and tormented) sleep, quite thankful to be pulled from a disturbing dream world (in which his sister bled tomato ketchup, and Brienne Tarth and Renly Baratheon were a gang; Brienne Tarth really had crept into his dreams more than he'd like to admit since he'd been condemned to her for the remainder of his scientific life), and exceedingly furious for being woken before midday – eight thirty-two am, to be precise.  
Cersei was pounding repeatedly on his door, until he awoke, livid, and then she hammered the wood some more. Evidently, she'd not calmed down since her fight with Lyanna Stark. "Jaime Lannister, get out of bed this instant and tell me what you've been doing snooping around my Facebook page!" Thunderously loud and thunderously irate. What a delight to wake up to.  
"For gods sake woman, leave me alone!" He yelled in answer, rolling over onto his face amid sleep-softened pillows that sprawled across his double bed, reaching out an arm to grab his digital cube of an alarm clock and hurl it brutally into his door, to answer her thumping.  
"You went on my Facebook and read my private messages!" Cersei was screaming through the door. Somewhere along the hall Tyrion was laughing from his bedroom, so very vociferously that the sound carried, loud and clear into his bedroom. "What the fuck are you giggling about, Imp?! I bet you helped him invade my privacy, you little –"  
"Cersei, shut up." Jaime half-groaned, half-bellowed.  
At which point, all three Lannister children began to shout at one another, Tyrion and Jaime from their own individual bedrooms, and Cersei from the landing, each screaming their own tangent; so much so that none of them noticed the heavy footsteps climbing the stairs, until Tywin Lannister stood hollering at the crown of the staircase, with such authority and finality in his voice, that even Cersei had to shut up. "Will all of you please pipe down! Now somebody tell me what is going on here!" Screaming silence. "Tyrion, Jaime, out here, right now!"  
Jaime groaned, and not just for entertainment purposes – dragging his sleep-laden body, leaden limbs protesting, from the enticing warmth of bed, and stumbled, bleary-eyed, golden hair askew, pyjamas and ancient band t-shirt rumpled. Beyond his now battered door, his father stood, harbourer of doom, gold-flecked green eyes glittering with firm disapproval, and, Jaime thought – a little hint of intrigue. (His father was a very hard man to read – but Jaime had been living with him for the best part of sixteen years.) Cersei was fuming, arms folded, possibly furious enough to make the list (of Jaime's Top Fifty Angry Cersei Moments), blonde hair in a thick braid, wearing that stupid lioness pendant she always wore, and for some bizarre reason, her emerald silk dressing gown matched her pyjamas. Why on earth would anyone go through the trouble of matching sleepwear? Jaime wondered, when perhaps, if he were anyone else, he'd be running frantically through a list of possible excuses as to why Cersei 's Facebook was hacked. Tyrion, standing wide awake beside their sister, looked rather too amused for Jaime's liking, in pyjamas and mismatched socks. Tywin swept his gaze across his children. "Well?"  
"Your son invaded my privacy, hacked my Facebook and read my personal messages, and I expect –"  
"Why are you so sure it was me?"  
"Because I know it was!"  
"How?"  
"You were –"  
"Why aren't you blaming Tyrion?"  
"Don't bring me into this! I'm just an innocent by passer –"  
"Shut up!"  
"You helped him! But he's Robert's friend and clearly most likely to –"  
"Will everybody quieten down!" Tywin thundered, glancing from child to child, as if he wasn't sure who to lay his resentment on thicker. Jaime sighed theatrically, staring down at his shuffling bare feet and granting the plush carpet his evillest death glare. "Your aunt and uncle will be here in three hours, and I will not stand for you three bickering like this! Cersei. Explain yourself."  
"This morning I logged onto my Facebook to find a message I had clearly never read, because if I had I would remember it, and found it already marked read and that means that somebody was on my account and –" at her disgusted somebody, his twin glared coldly at Jaime, before stalking back into her bedroom and slamming the door shut, loudly.  
Tywin stared at each of his sons in turn. "Leave her be. And you two – if I hear that this is true, and –"  
"Fear not, it's very clearly an absurd lie –" Jaime put in, languidly rubbing the sleep from his eyes.  
"Do not interrupt me, Jaime." Tywin glanced him up and down, and then with revulsion at his youngest child, before turning on his heels and striding down the landing. "Now get ready. All of you."

The Lannister garden was a child's dream come true; two acres of apple trees, flower-speckled field and, bordering the end of their land, a small stream – littered with various fragments of life; a basketball hoop crooked from the time Tyrion had bet Jaime that he couldn't do three chin-ups on it; the remnants of a treehouse that Cersei had ordered and Jaime had spent a summer attempting to built – splinters of wooden boards and nails still clung to the trunk; that patch of perpetually dried grass, where the pool was. And yet Jaime Lannister sat, arms loosely wrapped around loosely drawn up legs, on the muddied bank of said stream, he thought not of the multitude of memories that came with a glance around the garden, or of the spectrum it brought – no, he was thinking, how the freaking hell am I meant to play next Sunday?  
He was still staring in disbelief at the text from Rhaegar; First game moved forward to next Sunday. Will explain later. Be prepared.  
Great. Because that helped him out a lot. It wasn't that he didn't have a complete and utter (and arrogant) confidence in his own skills – which he, more than anyone else he knew (except maybe his twin sister) did – but it was that this first fortnight back at school after the holidays had not been the best – getting inexplicably entangled with Brienne Tarth, having his sister focus her man eating tendencies on one of his best friends, being forced into communications with Uncle Kevan – and somehow crowning it with the truly staggering amount of football pressure was not the perfect end to it. What if things with Cersei complicated Robert's focus? What if the new subs weren't good enough? What if Brandon was too preoccupied with two other guys being infatuated with his girlfriend to put enough into the game?  
(These girl creatures complicated everything.)  
"What's on your mind, big brother? Dad wants you inside for lunch with Genna and Kevan. Like, now."  
Jaime turned, frowning, fiddling with the grass at his feet, to see Tyrion standing by him, looking half-concerned and half-amused, as he always did. He was just feeling heavy. He hadn't had long enough to prepare himself for the extra bursts of self-assuredness that each match called for. He was fretting about enduring science classes with the Tarth from hell. He was worried for his friend, who was having his heart simultaneously trodden on by his sister (on purpose) and Lyanna Stark (inadvertently. Although Lya was hot enough for it to be just as big an issue). Living with the Bitch Queen herself didn't help matters – nor did the new onslaught of dreams (that made him worry for his sanity); he'd never had dreams before, let alone odd nightmarish sleep-visions. And now he had to deal with Cersei's Facebook-hacking tantrums and his dad's siblings.  
"Just stuff. I got a text from the Prince. The big opening game's been called forth to Sunday – no, not tomorrow – next Sunday."  
Tyrion sat himself down next to him, watching the twining ribbon of watercourse with intent fascination. "You know, Jaime, what might cheer you up?"  
"What?"  
"Aunt Genna just dropped an onion and Kevan nearly slipped up on it."  
Jaime gave a half-hearted snort. There was something funny about that image, but he couldn't quite convince himself it was worth cheering up over – sometimes there was nothing like having a good, old-fashioned sulk – and teamed with a pity-party he had the perfect recipe for the perfect way to bum himself out. He dropped his gaze to the grass, and then back up ahead of him again. "You know, I just feel idiotically down. Like I'm remembering everything bad that's ever happened."  
"Ah," Tyrion nodded wisely, sympathetically, placing a hand on Jaime's tensed shoulder. "I understand what you're going through." Jaime turned to him, but the really died upon his lips – of course Tyrion understood teenage moodiness. He was a smart-ass dwarf in a high school full of idiots. "It's just the cons of your meriod."  
"My what?"  
"Male period. That time of the month when everything seems hopeless."  
Jaime found himself laughing, despite himself. "That is not a thing."  
"It is!" Tyrion insisted, grinning. "And come on, look on the bright side. You may have to deal with idiotic relatives –" He gave a cough that sounded suspiciously like Cersei. "- but you've yet to surpass the horrors of – what was it, you said? – book shelving with Walder Frey and bloody Brienne Tarth. This game is a good thing – no matter the outcome it'll merely increase your popularity and take your mind off other things, and you know it."  
Jaime nodded, mulling his brothers words over in his mind. It was the Brienne Tarth comment that irritated him, that his mind kept snagging on like a foot on a root – she was an ugly, boring cow, and he despised her; but somehow now he felt like only he was allowed to despise her. (he would not say she was his to despise – and the funniest thing was, he'd only properly, horrifying interacted with her once or twice; it was more the dreading thoughts of it, and the mental-ass dreams that had ruined him.) "Right, right. You know what – let's go face the relatives."  
Tyrion nodded, and they stood up, making their way back to the rather enormous (by anyone else's standards) Lannister home. Seated around the kitchen table were, Tywin, Genna, Kevan and Cersei, who was reading a magazine (probably How To Be a Heartless Bitch – Teen Edition!) and coolly ignoring everyone else. Cersei did that a lot; as if she were of a higher rank than those surrounding her and hence needn't bother herself the troubles of looking at them or addressing them as if they were of a level with her. There was some sort of poultry surrounded by roast potatoes, steaming vegetables. Jaime drew up a chair as far away from his twin sister as humanly possible and set about piling his plate as high as doable, not making any moves to start a conversation.  
"Save some for the rest of us," Kevan murmured after a while, watching Jaime still shovel peas onto his stacked plate.  
"Oh, leave him be, Kevan, he's a growing lad – aren't you, Jaime?" Genna put in, leaning across the table to him. He gave no answer, instead wondering about Genna and Kevan and his father and what they'd have been like as children, and whether they'd have been as unmanageable as he and his siblings. "He needs his strength! Your father's been telling me all about your football, Jaime – apparently you're very good?"  
"Well yes, I was the youngest Westeros High quarterback in history, Genna." Jaime muttered plainly, shovelling (rather squashed) Yorkshire pudding into his mouth. Cersei was shooting him dirty looks every so often. He pointedly ignored them.  
"Oh, yes, yes, we must come watch you at a game sometime!"  
At that, Jaime quickly refrained from mentioning his upcoming match had been moved foreward.  
"And I suppose, handsome lad like you, with the sports, you've attracted some of the nicer girls, eh?" Genna nudged him across the table as if she thought she were a cool aunt who he could tell stuff to. Jaime really did wonder what would happen if he took the gravy ladle and ladled the gravy over her head. (Though, really, if he were going to start thinking like that, then he really ought to be wandering what would happen should he dump the contents of the gravy pot onto Cersei's head.)  
"Well, I don't know about me," Jaime said loudly, "But Cersei here does so love to use men to get her way. Say, sister, why don't you tell Aunt Genna about how you're using one of my best friends to make the boyfriend of another girl jealous? Or attempting to, since he's not even attracted to you, in the slightest – in the slightest."  
And wordlessly, mouth tight, irate eyes furious, Cersei stood up sharply, chair scraping stridently against the polished tiled floor. "I don't believe I'm hungry any more." She declared. "I think I'll excuse myself." And with that she turned on her heels and stormed out of the kitchen. Once more her footsteps banged noisily, echoing around the house – not quite as impressive an echo as the echo of her violently slamming door, however.  
In attempts to shatter the awkward, deafening silence that followed, Tyrion smiled, passing a bowl of Swede along to Kevan. "More Swede, anyone? No?" A wry smile quirked at the corners of his ever sardonic mouth. "And to answer your question properly, Aunt Genna, Jaime's not had a relationship with anyone but his hair since middle school – but I've recently started seeing a lovely girl named Tysha."  
"You what?" Jaime was too confused to be upset, about anything.  
"And what is this Tysha girl like, may I ask, my secretive Tyrion?" Their father inquired tightly, wiping at the corners of his mouth with a napkin.  
"Oh, she'd very funny. You'd like her. She lives in the trailer park down Aelf End, with her mother and second stepfather." Tyrion continued pleasantly, and Jaime realized with increasing respect for his younger brother that this was all to detract attention from his minor disagreement with Cersei. As if Tywin Lannister would let any son of his have anything to do with a girl who lived in a trailer. Surveying the look that Tywin was giving his youngest child, Jaime awkwardly stood himself up, wished luck to Tyrion, and excused himself on account of 'match pep talks over the phone'.  
He was still laughing when he got to his room.

**A/N ~ **Basically, the reason all my updates are so sporadic is that we're moving soon, and I have little internet usage. So, whenever I can, I'm attempting to upload a few chapters, just to keep y'all going.


	6. Game Time (Is Terrifying)

**The Adventures of Super Jock and Awkward Girl**

**A/N ~ **Basically this is the chapter in which it _gets good._ Trust me. As always, I am English and hence mistakes are probably going to be made in the ways of American football. I really am quite the fool for setting this AU in a football-dominated America, but shut up. Don't forget to get involved with **_Reviews For More Braime_**! (In which you put 'Reviews for more Braime' at the end of your review and I give you a spoiler excerpt from a later chapter, about five lines long, depending on the length of review.) I love you, all of you who have taken the time to read this nonsense, I do, I do. Oh, and remember that interview in which Gwen said that Brienne would probably listen to thrash metal? Yeah, I took that to heart.

**Coming Up… **Jaime releases his frustrations on entirely the wrong person, Robert is kind of a dick because Cersei and Lyanna have broken him, _everyone_ gets furious at one point or another, (except understanding fluffy rainbow cake Rhaegar), a hand is broken, and _somebody_'s turned traitor for the Wall Academy Crows. (Which you actually won't find out about until next chapter.) **Find out in The Adventures of Super Jock and Awkward Girl!**

**6.****Game Time (Is Terrifying)**

Jaime Lannister was sweating profusely, for some odd reason, which was utterly abstract and confusing for him, as he sat in solitude on the bench in the midst of the steamed-up locker rooms, waiting for… something. Jaime Lannister did not understand; Jaime Lannister was not nervous – he was the best _freaking_ quarterback this damn school had ever seen, naturally! Jaime Lannister did not get nervous. He stared down at his bared feet, running a hand through his disarraying golden hair and shifting, sighing. First matches of the season were always guaranteed to be a bit intimidating – to the others, of course. Nothing intimidated Jaime Lannister. Jaime Lannister intimidated people.

Whilst the other members of the team were out, being drilled by the best young coach that Westeros High had ever seen – one Barry Stan Selmy, he'd been granted time to stay behind and take a breather – after all, he was one of the star players; exceptions could be granted for him (and even if he wasn't, he was Jaime Lannister; that meant certain rules didn't apply to him.) So, he stood himself up and closed his eyes, taking a momentary breath. Outside the locker room, beyond the hall, he could hear Lyanna Stark shouting, drilling the girl's team; they'd be playing the second match, after lunch. Though of course, their leader board starting point had _everything_ to do with how well the guys team got along. And Lyanna Stark was going to _kill_ them all if they made her girls look bad.

Though maybe, if they did do badly, it _could_ be pinned on Lyanna fucking Stark anyway, for accidently getting herself lodged in Robert Baratheon's head. Which of course, could lead to conflicts between Rhaegar and Robert – Lyanna _and_ Cersei clearly preferred Rhaegar to the poor fellow. Jaime had long since guessed that Robert and Cersei were done after Cersei tried to kiss Rhaegar at the diner that night. And, match-wise, it wouldn't help Robert, Rhaegar _or_ Lyanna to have Cersei The Meddling Manipulating Moron herself prancing about (prancing prat) at the top of the pom-pom wielding pyramid.

So he rolled his eyes to the benefit of himself, and dug his hands into the pocket of his crimson Westeros Dragons tracksuit, fumbling for his locker key. When his fingers managed _not_ to close around cold metal, and then again when he rifled through his other pocket, he began to fret, and quite considerably, too, stomach dropping and somehow fuelling the demented hammering of his (rib)caged heart.

Wondering (and pinning all his hopes on that wonderment) whether he'd perhaps unlocked said locker earlier and then left the keys somewhere, Jaime hastened to attempt to pull open his firmly-locked locker. _Oh great. Selmy, Rhaegar and Lyanna are going to (attempt to) kill me (he'd like to see them try.)._ Well, really, it was just a bloody brilliant way to cap an equally crappy couple of weeks. _Shitshitshitshitshit._

Jaime Lannister struck the locker door with all of his (considerable, if he did think so himself) might and ended up with a dent in his prized locker and a significant searing soreness in his fist. Stomach now roiling in something other than nerves, Jaime strode out of the locker room door, and glanced uneasily at the clock that hung, harbourer of his demise, in the corridor – the match was supposed to start in fifteen minutes. _Oh, seven bloody buggering hells._

Taking off at a sprint down the fluorescent-lit corridor web, Jaime skidded to a halt before the coach's office, perhaps fastening all his hopes to the chance to talk his way into borrowing someone's Dragon kit, one of the subs maybe, or something, _anything_. Tyrion, although the most practised and adept, was not the only Lannister who could talk himself out of trouble. (Tyrion however was the most practised and adept since he never allowed arrogance and soaring self-esteem to clutter his progression – not that Jaime ever did, of course… He would resort to weaponizing words if he had to.) Chances of speaking to Selmy in private were shattered. Selmy was, of course, out giving the rest some kind of pep talk, no doubt.

But no, Selmy, Stark, Targaryen – they'd have a fit if they found out Jaime'd lost his locker keys, the locker keys to the locker than contained his _only_ uniform. (Which was, you know, _their_ problem, aside from the fact he'd be in the firing line. He'd been in the firing line before and lived.) (Of course, if he were _anyone else_ he _might_ be a _tad_ concerned about perhaps being kicked off the team.) (But he was _Jaime freaking Lannister_, and hence, _golden_.) And then, a curious little voice in the back of his head sent forth a rather _interesting_ (rather, _infuriating_) thought.

What if he'd not lost them.

And then it came crashing down onto him, realization deafening and clear and lucid; he knew _exactly_ who would have stolen them, just to shame him, just to put him down. And Jaime took off running again, golden hair damp and disorganized, trainers squalling on the polished flooring. Following the ever increasing sounds of Lya Stark and company, the girl Westeros Dragons team practising and pepping, and whatever else they did. And he swore, fuming, fury burning up inside of him, sparks of rage kindling to a frenzied inferno as he grew ever closer to the perpetrator. He was going to _destroy_ Brienne Tarth.

As, once more, his sneakers skittered to a screaming halt by the girls' training room, he found himself near trembling with budding ire. Inside, Lyanna Stark was making an impassioned speech that involved a lot of swearing and laughing and flamboyant, sweeping hand gestures, to a team that were half paying amused and admiring attention and half slipping whispers and notes and snores about. Maege Mormont seemed to be the first person to notice the breathless, red-faced (from fury, of course, not over-exercise) Lannister seething at the doorway. She motioned, and Lyanna turned to him, looking quite irritated at having her loud and gaudy speech interrupted. "Yes, Lannister?"

"I believe there's someone here I need to have a little _talk_ with?"

Lyanna looked at him as if he were suffering some bizarre mental condition. "Dude, your game starts in like, ten minutes and you're not even dressed yet –"

"About that. _Tarth –" _He spat. "Might I speak to you out here for just a moment, please?"

Brienne, looking (pleasingly) exceedingly uncomfortable at the sudden dozen eyes on her, scowled at the floor. She muttered something about _why._ Enraged, Jaime just motioned furiously, and, reluctantly, Tarth rose and stumbled around the rest of the team. The moment she reached the doorway, Jaime's grip tightened around her wrist and yanked her (which was not an easily accomplished feat) out further into the deserted corridor.

"_What, Lannister?" _ Tarth muttered, glaring daggers at him with those blue eyes.

"You _know_ what!" Jaime snarled. "Give me my key back and then we can call it quits, okay?" He thrust his open palm out to her, glowering.

"What key? I didn't take any _key_, Lannister."

"You know you did, give it _back_ because if I'm not out there in eight minutes, our team is going to _fail_. And if our team goes, so does your little team, got it? Give me the keys. Now."

"I don't have your keys, I _told_ you." Brienne hissed. "Unlike some people, I'm no liar."

"So now you're calling me a liar?"

"Well, you're certainly not a truthful person, are you?"

"Like you're so perfect," He snorted and spat at the ground.

"I know _very well_ that I'm not perfect, Lannister, you see, unlike certain people, I don't truly believe I am."

"We can do this later, I have a match to play!"

"Well then I'm afraid that I can't help you." Tarth insisted, with a fiercely defiant glance (down at her shoes.)

"Give me the keys, or I will make your life hell."

"Oh, I'm sorry, were you not already?"

"I need them."

"I don't have them."

"_Jaime! On the pitch, now!" _The familiar rumble of Coach Selmy as his footsteps thundered down the hallway collided with Jaime's violent rage. "We've been looking all over for you, Lannister, you've got less than ten minutes to be changed and be out there or we're putting in Reed, which will loose us the championship. Come _on_."

"I can't, Coach, this _idiot_'s stolen my locker keys and –"

"_This idiot_ is Stark's star striker. She'd have no reason for trying to sabotage our game. Tarth – you get back in there with the rest and you forget about this." Barry Stan ordered, and Brienne nodded, traipsing back in with the remainder of the female Westeros Dragon team. Jaime seethed, enraged. Oh, she'd have _plenty_ of reasons for sabotaging his game, and the bitch gets off, scot-free. "Now, Lannister, you get to our spare kits, you get your ass out there, and you win us this game! Understood, quarterback?"

"Understood." Jaime spat, tearing off down the hallway, still cursing Brienne Tarth.

And after a whirlwind changing, leaving his tracksuit flung haphazardly over a bench, Jaime arrived out on the churned pitch two and a half minutes before the game kicked off. Just long enough to go, aching and panting, to stand by Baratheon, who, with an inquiring look (which, Jaime thought lacked his usual coarse laugh) Jaime ignored, still unfortunately wallowing in pity and rage. Cersei, with the rest of her idiot cheerleading squad, from the sidelines, granted him several dirt looks. And yet his bitterness was a rather profitable factor, as it turned out, because he could express his rage on the football, and on the opposing team – Wall Academy Crows – 's players. And the adoring cheers of the Westeros High crowd, and the intermingling chanting of the (if irritating) cheerleaders spurred him onward. The sprint to and from locker room beforehand, however, had already tired Jaime out, which meant every push of his football boots against the churning, muddy ground send blazing pain lacing up his muscles. Ignoring of the aches, Jaime fought on, furious, and all but crawled (of course, he didn't resort to crawling yet. He still had some dignity and some reputation to cling to.) to the benches pitch-side at half time, grappling for a water bottle and draining it within seconds, coolness soothing his inflamed, papery throat, plastic crunching beneath his dirtied grip. He tossed the empty bottle aside, panting, lungs revelling in each breath. It felt so good just to sit down. Rhaegar came staggering over, clapped him, winded and wheezing, on the shoulder.

"Well played out there, boys," He puffed. "At the moment we're tied. Neck _and _neck. Everyone clear on the stance for the second half? Trant? Lannister? Barathe – where's Baratheon?"

Jaime turned, mud-beaded, sweat-drenched dulled-golden hair whipping his stinging face. Robert was indeed gone from the sidelines. Not good. Half of the pre-planned strategy depended on Robert's unflinching (though of course, Jaime thought, not _Jaime Lannister Standard_) talent. Rhaegar repeated his inquiry after Rob, volume markedly increased, and Jaime found himself frowning and shaking his head along with the team. Though pallid sunlight streamed down through the most emaciated, sheer smearing of gauzy clouds, the September winds obstinately thrashed both Dragons and Crows alike, referees and substitutes, crowds and cheerleaders. Cheerleaders. Jaime turned, still grappling to calm his erratic heartbeats, to see, indeed, the head Westeros High cheerleader gone from their squadron. Catching Ashara Dayne's eye, Jaime mouthed a frowning _where's Cersei?_ To which she shook her head, shrugging. This couldn't be good.

"I – I'm just going to the guy's room." Jaime declared, standing on pain-softened legs, and before Rhaegar or Selmy had time to respond, he'd, agonizingly, fled for the double-doors beneath the bleachers, flying into the corridor maze, where he followed the expected, swelling voices of his sister and Robbie Baratheon.

"Why the _hell_ would you tell me that, you stupid cow, you knew –"

"Don't you dare talk to me like that! I didn't know _anything_ about your little plan –"

"Oh, of course not –"

"Why would I try and wreck a match, you know my cheerleading career would be dragged through the dust and –"

"Quiet woman, would you let me speak for _one moment_ –"

Jaime rounded the corner onto them, both looking rather furious and rather flustered, for some obscure reason. Cersei was standing, looking for all the world as if she were about to slap Robert (she had assumed the pre-slap stance; a stature that Jaime had observed countless times growing up with the woman), who was wild-eyed, and looking somehow as shifty and anxious as he was irate. They both turned to look at him with fire in their eyes. "Will either of you care to explain to me what's going on?"

"No." Cersei muttered immediately. "Half time'll be over all too soon. I'll leave you to explain your pathetic little slip up, shall I, dear Robert?" She spat with a grimace over her shoulder as she strode firmly out, wreathed in thunder. Robert watched her go, and then turned back to Jaime, with a hopelessness about his expression.

"What?"

Robert shifted, looking at his feet. "Ah, you see Jaime, I don't know if the bitch told you, but she tried – _tried_, mind you, thank the heavens for Lyanna Stark – to get off with the Prince the night of our date. And I naturally had to get back at her, for humiliating me…" He sighed heartily. "I could've sworn she'd let slip something about you having her locker key, and I thought it might be funny if she was late for the match because she couldn't get to her cheerleading outfit…"

Realization was dawning on Jaime Lannister, a dark, dark dawning (that made it hard to restrain himself from flying at Baratheon).

"And then you turning up late, in that spare kit… I'd got the wrong keys, I knew it, and I felt awful – I _feel_ _awful_, Jaime – and… Look, it's hardly my fault! I just wanted to give her a little taste of the embarrassment she gave me, gives me, constantly, and, in fact, it might not even be an honest mistake, she could've just mentioned the keys if she was mad at you, or –"

Oh no, it wasn't to do with Cersei, Jaime knew – although the witch would do everything along those lines, and had done, in the past – she'd have no reason to be upset with him. It was _after_ she'd had her little brawl with Brandon's sister that he and Tyrion had hacked her Facebook and invaded her privacy and blah blah blah. He understood. He understood completely. Just as he was opening his mouth, Coach Selmy came jogging in, looking exasperated. "How many times today Lannister, out on the pitch, Baratheon, go, go!"

They followed their coach, the coal-haired and the gold, seething and avoiding one another's gaze, and Jaime, kindling his fury into energy for the game. Their teammates were already jogging out across the grass when they joined them, and when the whistle sounded, along with the conflicting screaming of the chattering, grumbling crowds, and the tuneful chant of (crazy) cheerleaders, Jaime let rip. He bowled through huddles, he kicked, he grabbed, he spat. And when, still neck and neck some time later, exhausted, dehydrated, furious (furious at Cersei, furious at Robert, furious at Lyanna and Rhaegar for being so _happy_ together, furious at himself, for some abstract reason, for taking it out on Tarth), it came down to him, gasping, long, Robert, a little away from him, grappling with a Crow, and the ball, hurtling towards him.

In the black uniform of the Wall Academy Crows, some big hulking brute blocking him lunged for it, precisely the same time as Robert Baratheon, as golden quarterback Jaime Lannister. The three squirmed along the muck, as sharp whistles blew, and something heavy, too heavy, crashed down onto Jaime's outstretched right hand, as it slipped through the churning mud for the ball, as Robert's violent, coarse cries of '_We're on the same team, relent, Lannister,' _and _ 'let me, you golden haired shit,' _pounding through his aching skull, and the heavy thing was too heavy, far too heavy, and his fingers were splaying out through cool, soothing mud beneath it's bulk, and he could feel the bones snapping and breaking and his hand falling limp and the bruises blossoming along his bone, and somehow, distantly, he could hear someone screaming, strident, squalling, agonizing screams, and somehow, distantly, he knew it was him.

And then his vision went fuzzy, and blue, blue like the sea at the edges, and then the edges crumpled and folded in, and everything was black.

**A/N ~ **Basically, the reason all my updates are so sporadic is that we're moving soon, and I have little internet usage. So, whenever I can, I'm attempting to upload a few chapters at a time, just to keep y'all going. Won't be able to post for a week after this chapter, unfortunately - but fear not! I will not disappoint (I hope.)


	7. No, It's The Broken Hand

**The Adventures of Super Jock and Awkward Girl**

**A/N ~ **I'm excessively proud of this particular hand story arc, particularly since more Braime comes with it. Apologies for the late update – house, moving, internet, spazzing, holidays, trauma. Updates may not become regular for a while now, I fear.

**Coming Up…** Hospitals bore Jamie to no end, flowers are sickening, Brienne saves the day (naturally), Eddard and Brandon are the bringers of doom (naturally), Cersei is not yet ready to apologise (naturally), and Tywin Lannister shows concern for his son (unnaturally). **Find out in The Adventures of Super Jock and Awkward Girl!**

**1. ****No, It's The Broken Hand That's Bothering Me**

The world was blindingly, searingly white when Jaime Lannister awoke, in a Febreeze-reeking land of blinding, searing whiteness. A few blinking moments of perplexion later, he realized he was somewhat held down by overly starched sheets, and beyond the large, thinly-veiled window, set shallow into the white, white wall beside him, a mist of rain had condensed the glass to foggy obscurity. Above, the harsh glare of the fluorescent, electronic lights burned his blurred eyes. His throat burned. Gods, he was thirsty. It took him a while to shake off the trailing tendrils of sleepiness, but when he did, it took him no time at all to realize he was in the hospital, and his hand was broken.

His _right_ hand. His _game_ hand. His _football _hand. The hand he'd beat the Iron Island Sporting College with _three leagues in a row._ And all because his sister was a man-eating moron. Well, not quite – but he had to have _someone_ to blame.

Next to Jaime's bed, resting on a plastic tray on the tabletop was a red plastic jug, plastic cup. An empty Doritos bag lay dormant beside the which, crumbs fresh. Matching fresh droplets of water clung to the cup. He had visitors, or had _had_ visitors not long ago. His hand killed. Already he could feel the wooziness, the haze of whatever heavy-duty painkillers they'd clogged up his insides with. A smaller, equally plastic beaker stood stoutly beside the water jug, with a thick, dusky substance inside. Some new kind of painkiller, he supposed. Also, he noted with a touch of Jaime-esque smugness, dozens of _Get Well Soon! _cards were arranged there, and along the windowsill. A few were even handmade. By his fans, no doubt. Nice to know the gang had not forgotten him while he was out of action. A large, gaudy mob of flowers malted their vivid petals across the floor, the tabletop.

It was only then, squinting in the stark lighting, head turned awkwardly across the thin pillow, that Jaime Lannister begun to realize just _how much_ his godforsaken hand burned. Agonizingly aching, the useless thing throbbed, a pulse clip attached to the tip of his ring finger – he'd clearly broken most of the bones in his hand, or near enough as to make no matter. The white plastic clock hanging on the ajar door read quarter past one in the afternoon.

It took a while of just lying there, contemplating how long he could milk the injury and skive school, and the larger issue of _how long before he could play again_, before a nurse came in, much to his annoyance, disposed of the Doritos packet, made him force down the medicine in the cup, which was quite frankly even more disgusting than anything he'd ever tasted before in his life, including dirt as a nine-year-old for a bet, and Cersei's attempts at cooking. She informed him that he'd been out for a few days, and he'd had plenty of people stop by regularly with gifts and cards. A further glance to the other side of him proved her words true – a small clan of gift bags clustered around the foot of his bed. In fact, the nurse – who seemed really quite put off by his irritated rebuffs (well, he did have a broken hand, and he was the WHD quarterback) – told him, his father was downstairs in the coffee shop right now.

She left, eventually, to fetch him some fresh water after he all but chugged the entirety of the jug down in two minutes. Jaime lay staring dully at the ceiling. How was this fair? How was any of this fair? On the bright side, that repulsive painkiller had killed a deal of the pain. On the sable souled, hell fire, abyss-like side, his father was downstairs in the coffee shop right now.

It took approximately – Jaime checked on the door-clock, and then cursed the lack of things to do around here – seven minutes for Tywin Lannister to come hastening to his eldest son's bedside. He strolled through the door, Starbucks takeaway cup in hand, looking for all the world as if he owned the hospital, and drew up a seat in the chair by the hospital bed.

"You're awake." He noted pleasantly, sipping his coffee and then placing it down on the tray. Jaime wanted to slap him. Oh, good – another thing he'd not be able to do for a while. Slap someone, that was – not even Jaime Golden Fucking Lannister would dare strike a man of such presence as his father.

"Well yes, Dad, thank you for noticing. Be a dear and pour me out a drink, I've not drunk as much as I'd like recently."

Tywin's expression was tight, yet he filled the cup and passed it emotionlessly to his son, whose left hand quaked even in anticipation of holding something, as it never truly had. Jaime promptly spilt half of it down himself. "For Seven's sake!" He swore, the thin hospital-issue quilt dampening, translucing, clinging. Tywin measurably peeled back Jaime's soaked cover. Jaime drowned in waves and waves of loathing. Not for his father, for his hand, for the Wall Academy Crows, for Cersei, for Robert and Rhaegar and Lyanna and his stupid, _stupid_ hand. How in the Warrior's name was Jaime meant to get _anything_ done now? Ever! He'd never felt so goddamned _useless_.

His father reached across and took the cup, sloshing it's contents back into the jug and setting it down on the tray. "Perhaps leave the water until you've mastered the more simple arts of holding things." Jaime opened his mouth to swear and scream as he so wanted to, but Tywin gave him _the look_ that silenced him before he even made any words. "Jaime. It's good to see you awake again." Wow. His father just openly gave away his emotional opinion on a matter. This must be what personal growth looked like. "How does it feel?"

"Excruciating." Jaime lied. In truth, it felt as though he ought to be wiggling his fingers about – felt as though he _was_ wiggling his fingers about, but the ones rooted to his body just stayed still. "I broke, what was it, every bone in the hand? Or rather, some Wall Academy oaf broke every bone in my hand."

"Not every bone, don't exaggerate for sympathy. You've got that already." Tywin gestured sweepingly around the flower-card-gift-bag festooned hospital room. "They've wrapped it up and you'll be out by tomorrow evening, hopefully."

"That doesn't help me with –"

"Jaime," His father rubbed his temples, exhaling. "Could you please _not be exactly like your mother for five seconds_?"

Silence squalled at him. It always did when Joanna Lannister was concerned. Tywin Lannister was _not_ a man to show his feelings for anybody to anybody, and, Jaime supposed, his children had learnt from him. They never mentioned their mother. Not really. Not anymore. She was in the ground, and the words just piled up and up on top of her. Nobody wanted that. If he thought about it too much, Jaime realized how much he actually did miss her; how little he remembered her, how much he did feel about the matter. And that was when his whole sparkling repute teetered in the balance. So he'd learnt to suppress any passing thoughts about Joanna. It was just… simpler that way.

"I'll do my best. Was it my breasts that gave me away or my long, flowing hair? I need to have it trimmed, I'm starting to look increasingly like Cersei." He tried a smirk, but it curled hopelessly and faltered. His father gave him a hard stare, and he recognized that now might not have been the best time to be himself.

"Jaime, just –" Whatever Tywin had been about to say died upon his lips. He rose, ruffled his son's hair and retrieved his coffee. "I'm glad you're alright." As he took his leave, Jaime gaped after him, and not all in mockery. Had – had his father – _his father, Tywin Lannister –_ just _ruffled his hair_?

Jaime sighed, settling himself back amongst the disappointing pillow – singular – and kicked away the damp dishcloth of his quilt, to fall half from the end of the bed. The stench of the flowers – whatever they were – was quite overpowering, their acridly cloying stink finding its way to him. Dizzying. He betted they were Cersei's attempt at a cruel punishment. For what, he didn't quite know, but supposed he would the instant the twins were reunited. There really wasn't much to do in hospital. He sort of wanted to break his other hand, just to see what would happen. Or just for something to do, really.

He stared at the clock, swimming in and out of his hazy vision, watching without seeing the hands tick rhythmically around the plastic face. Every so often his nervous nurse returned with water – which, humiliatingly enough so as to make him despise her more, she helped him drink – and fresh painkillers, whose tasted improved not at all. It wasn't until it neared four o clock that the familiar rabble burst through his doors, after their shouting, jesting echoes had preceded them down corridors.

Arthur Dayne, Bryndon Tully, Rhaegar Targaryen, Lya Stark, Jorah and Dacey Mormont, Gregor Clegane, Elia and Ashara, Robert Baratheon (trailing somewhat behind, unlike his usual loud, crude self) and his brother Renly (thankfully he spared of Stannis and his mental-but-hot foreign girlfriend), Brandon Stark and Cat Tully. Jaime managed a rather dampened version of one of his famous Jaime Lannister's Model-esque Grins, easing himself up further with the help of his thankfully unscathed elbows. The hoard of his friends gathered around his bedside, bringing with them bagfuls of you're-hurt-so-why-not-cheer-you-up-with-pity-food food. Which he accepted happily, declining eating now to save himself the embarrassment of attempted to feed himself left-handed in front of them.

When they'd all squeezed and settled comfortably into his cell, Jaime eagerly pounced upon the question that had been roiling in his mind, troubling him ever since he awoke. "So – did we win?"

Silence. Downcast eyes. Great. He broke his hand and subsequently lost them the game. The Wall Academy Crows as well! However good they used to be, the WA was becoming a bit of a joke of a school. "Really that bad? It seems you really _can't_ play without me."

"No, not _really that bad_," Dacey countered from her squashed perch on the steamy windowsill. "You're guys lost after you went down, but then the rain came and we showed them all the fucking might of girl power." She wiped the glass with her sleeve; beyond he had a stunningly picturesque view of the hospital car park. The sky, though bright, was bruised, and stormy – it wasn't raining, but the puddle-strewn asphalt and the weeping of the limp leaves hinted at bloody monsoon season.

"It was actually quite amazing to watch." Arthur Dayne put in, tossing a Skittle in the air and catching it in his mouth – a feat he thought impressive, no doubt.

"Of course it was, we're brilliant." Lyanna muttered, and Jaime had to smirk despite himself. He couldn't be blamed for his team's failure and if the ladies had managed to salvage their position in the championship, surely he could redeem himself. Once his hand was all fixed up.

"So modest, Lya." Her eldest brother muttered.

"Shut up."

"Kidding, Lyanna." Brandon nodded and smiled. "You were very good."

"It was the blonde one that really won it for you," Robert put in. "You know, the big ugly one?"

"Brienne?" Renly nodded. "She's very good out on the pitch, at least."

Jorah rolled his eyes. Jaime shifted uncomfortably, remembering his _outburst_ as to which Brienne Tarth was on the receiving end. He wasn't entirely sure why that made him feel uncomfortable – he'd shouted at so many people without ever really feeling the need to apologise. But then, he was on a lot of drugs right now. He'd probably kiss Lysa Tully if she was too forceful. Now there was a thought to shudder at.

And so they all sat around his bed and they joked and bantered and talked sport and dating and who made a fool of themselves over who, until Rhaegar checked his watch, then the corresponding clock on the door, and announced he had to get going, had to pick up his baby brother Viserys from a playdate or something, and the rest soon followed, trickling out after their leader. Robert Baratheon still avoided his gaze, stupid oaf; until, when the last had left, Brandon and Ned Stark came wandering back in. Jaime glanced up in question.

"Right, mate, we kind of have something to confess," Brandon started, seating himself in the sole bedside chair.

"We thought it wouldn't be right if we left here without telling you," Eddard put in. Jaime resisted the urge to kick him. He tolerated Brandon and Lyanna, and saw little of the youngest Stark, Ben, but Eddard? Little Neddy Two Shoes? He held a resounding resentment for him, and his rule-abiding, quiet wisdom. It was all Jaime could do not to make some sort of offensive joke about Ned's feelings for his brother's girlfriend. Then again, perhaps it was best to stay out of the pentagon of love, where Catelyn Tully was concerned.

"What?" Jaime asked, suspicious, guards all up again.

"Our little brother. Benjen." Brandon started. "He's got some friends up at the Wall Academy, knows a few Crows – there was talk about him going to school there, in fact. Anyway, he was feeding them all our game plans. I guess he overheard me talking about our positions and whatever. That's why they took you down first – knew you were holding our hopes of a starting upper hand. Lya was smart enough not to discuss football strategies around anyone but her girls -"

"We're sorry - if you –"

Jaime cut Ned Stark off with a withering glare. "Assuming he's forever eliminated from the list of Westeros Dragons subs?"

"Of course."

"Fine. Go, I want to sleep."

They did. Jaime managed to get some water inside of him without dousing himself like a bloody reborn Iron Islander. He was getting better, he thought with little mirth; soon he'd be able to do much more complex things like eat with a spoon. Indeed, Jaime Lannister did get some sleep. It was better when sleeping, he found; dulled the continual throb of his broken hand. Sleeping was good. And for once, he had an untroubled rest. Painkillers killed both pain and, apparently, bizarre, therapy-desperate dreams. For that he was grateful. Until an uncertain knock on the door woke him, and he saw it was quarter past eight, nearly. His glorious nap was short lived, and he was ready to throttle whoever walked through that door for waking him.

He murmured some incomprehensible greeting, and the door opened, and he realized his visitor didn't need to be throttled _just for waking him_.

"Hi." Brienne Tarth's eyes were downcast, to her shifting feet, and she as picking at the fraying hem of the sleeve of her enormous jumper. "Sorry if I woke you."

"No, not at all." Jaime muttered sourly. "What are you doing here anyway?"

She swallowed, still lurking doubtfully in the doorway, nearly filling the damn thing, as if she wasn't sure if she was supposed to come in and sit down or not. "I – It was my dad's idea. He wanted me to come and see how you were getting on and –" She damn near choked on her tongue.

"At this time? Really, girl, people might get the wrong idea, and unlike you I do have a somewhat platinum reputation to hold up –"

"I thought everyone else would be gone by now, I didn't want to bump into anyone." Brienne murmured, shifting slightly in the entrance, showing no sign of making any move to come in.

"Of course, of course, gods forbid." Jaime rolled his eyes theatrically. "What are you still here for?"

"I just –"

This, he decided, was a perfectly wonderful opportunity to unload all of his fuming burdens. Oh, how good to let it all go.

"Can't finish sentences? My nurse has that problem too, just like you, she is, except better looking, but then, I expect most people are. Very annoying. Making a big fuss out of the flowers – who brought me flowers anyway? How _gay_ is that?"

"I don't know – and anyway, _gay_ is not an adjective, it's a –"

"Offensive? You'd know all about the use of that word, wouldn't you?" Brienne had turned a spectacular, blotchy red. It was quite satisfying. Not even embarrassing the easily embarrassed Tarth – just getting it all off his freaking chest. Having a broken hand came with a whole load of annoyances and fresh horrors that nobody understood. As Tyrion would have so banally put it – he was having a _big time_ meriod. "Oh, relax, girl, I'm not talking about you, though it's a fucking wonder. I'm talking about your special little friend? The one you're half in love with because he has the nerve to speak to you in public?"

"Shut _up_." Brienne growled, and somehow, something inside Jaime collapsed and he began to feel very, very guilty. It was naturally his right, as Jaime Lannister and as an official Injured Person, to release his frustrations onto other people, but he really shouldn't have touched on Renly. Even he knew, somewhere deep down, that that was way too far.

"Sorry."

After a crushing, swelling seeming centaury of roaring, heavy silence, Brienne Tarth sat herself down in the chair by his bedside. "Does my very – just – _being_ bother you so much?"

"No," Jaime admitted. He wasn't quite sure where that word had come from; he'd certainly not bid it sanction to escape from his mouth. "It's the broken hand that's bothering me."

She nodded. "I broke my wrist once. Football accident. Sort of."

"How'd it happen?" _Why, Jaime Lannister, why, for Seven's sake are you engaging in conversation with Brienne freaking Tarth? Why?_ His thoughts were clashing.

Still not bothering to look up at him – apparently there was something far more interesting to be heard on the polished hospital flooring – Brienne took quite a while to decide whether she wanted to put herself through the trouble of talking to The Golden Quarterback. Jaime almost wanted to protest – she and The Golden Quarterback were never going to stand one another, but she could always talk to Just Jaime. Whoa. _Where in the seven hells did that come from_. When she still avoided answering, a dozen cruel jokes sprung into his mind. He managed to suppress them all.

"My dad – he thinks I don't socialize well enough. He tried to set me up on a date –" At this Jaime snorted, and then, at the cobalt glare he received, wished he hadn't. " – with this boy, who's the son of his work friend or something, I don't know. He said we had similar sporting interests or something. I said that I would agree if this boy could beat me in a fair football fight. He didn't. it turned into a not so fair actual fight, or – um – anyway, you don't want to hear – I'm going to go."

She was just pushing herself from her chair when something made him stop her. Pity, drugs. He'd blame the latter later on, but perhaps it was the first. Perhaps it was a bit of both. "My dad's the same. Always trying to make me go on dates with people he knows. Think's it'll mature me up, stupid bastard. One such girl threw a drink in my face. Apparently she found me stunningly attractive, naturally, but that was washed away by my, I quote, obnoxiously offensive humor."

He thought, just for a split second, that she was maybe going to smile. Then thought better of it. "I can imagine."

"Thanks."

"One had a rose, and then threw it away when he saw me."

"Ouch. One decided I had too little IQ halfway through the evening and just left. My brother never let me forget."

"Your brother's the dwarf. I'm – I never – I'm never sure how to respond to him,"

"Believe me, none of us are."

Though Jaime would deny this, and make himself believe it was the drugs, though Jaime would remedy this with classic Golden Quarterback-ness, he spent quite the evening talking to Brienne Tarth that night. And a tiny little bit of him found it more enjoyable – more enlightening – than cruel gossip with the his footballers.


	8. You're Watching Snog, Marry, Avoid

**The Adventures of Super Jock and Awkward Girl**

**A/N ~ **Badumdumdumdumdum. Gwen's going to be in Mockingjay and that makes me happier than cake. In other news, does anyone else agree that if George sets back the Winds of Winter release date any further we should storm his home with a vanguard of clansmen? Dothraki? No?

**Disclaimer** I own neither A Song of Ice and Fire, it's characters, or Facebook, or anything else apart from the story and the words because I'm sad and poor.

**Coming Up… **Cersei turned Jaime's life into a Gok Wan show, Tyrion finds it hilarious, Jaime realized he can _rock the sling look_, and for once everyone becomes uncertain and/or reluctant about partying it up like it's Pentos. **Find out in The Adventures of Super Jock and Awkward Girl!**

**1. ****Hello, I'm Cersei and This Is Snog, Marry, Avoid**

Nearly a month on and he _still_ wasn't allowed to be rid of the godforsaken sling.

Jaime Lannister was, with his useless hand bound and perpetually slung, hardly _recovering fast_, as that stupid Doctor Qyburn swore he would be. He couldn't even use football as an outlet for all his raging rages; after turning up to practise and dropping the ball every five minutes with his stupid useless left hand, Rhaegar and Selmy both had agreed it best for him to take enough time as he needed for it to heal up. They had all their fancy new subs, after all. Or, that was how Jaime consoled himself outwardly. It was a natural instinct of his not to show weakness – if he'd learnt anything, if as inadvertently and unaware as this from his father, it was to keep a cool surface. (Even if his was polished so much so that those who looked too hard saw themselves instead, where his father was all hard stone.)

At night, however, his real fury crept back up on him.

He couldn't sleep anymore anyway – the damned _injuries _made it too awkward to toss and turn as he was used to. If he wanted to roll himself over he had to first guide his broken hand into a safe (meaning, uncomfortable) position with the other hand, which was nigh on as inept as the former. But it _wasn't_ just that, and the continual dull ache, and that was the truth of it. He'd stare at his blu-tack-pockmarked ceiling, the sounds of his breathing annoying him to no end, as he contemplated how spectacularly shit his life had become.

Qyburn and the rest failed to specify how long _exactly_ before he'd be rid of his forced wariness – that was hard enough; Jaime freaking Lannister had never been _wary_ before in his life – and be able to cast away the cast, and play again. The football was his thing, had always been his thing. Without it, he wasn't entirely sure what was left. (He was Quarterback Jaime. He _was_ the football, the football made him.) Aside from his ever-blazing resentment for his twin sister and her devious plots, which had turned one of his best friends away from him.

He wasn't used to all these thoughts.

And then there was the pressing matter of Brienne Tarth – because really, it'd all started going so sharply downhill the moment Mr Goddamned Hoster Tully had condemned him to a year of enduring _science_ class with her. Science was in fact tolerable now, because he'd learnt to find humour and parody in every detail of the class. That it was so; that was sort of the problem. Since their little talk (he said little, really, she'd been there hours) in the hospital, he'd been torn between his increasing shame for associating himself with the freakshow, and between the shame at feeling the previous shame. If that made any sense – it hardly did to him.

Because since then, he'd tried _so_ hard to cover his tracks from his guys, that his simple taunting of Brienne (and of Petyr Baelish, Lysa Tully, little Pod Payne and the rest of Westeros High's rejects) had turned so sour that it was far past cruel, by now. He revelled in it by day, taking pleasure in doing the one thing he did so well aside from football, like before the hand, taking pleasure from the raucous laughter of his friends, of causing that and taking pleasure in seeing the idiots flinch, knowing he caused that too. He _revelled _in it, because it had taken his mind off of his hand (and catapulted him even higher in the school's food chain, if that was possible), and it was, after all _funny_. No, it was _hilarious_. Yes, he _revelled in it by day._ But lying sore and irritated in his bed, eyes boring dully into the roof, listening to the slightly out-of-time muffled clicks of his bedside digital alarm clock with the slower, more rhythmic pulse of the grandfather clock crowning the hallway outside, he _loathed it._ And he loathed himself gradually more and more for gradually enjoying it more and more.

And then he'd wake up, ridicule and torment the gauche and the lonely, and then he'd fail at sleeping, and wish he'd never done it, and vow never to do it again, and then he'd wake up again, and reprise it all. Again. (On a side note, he'd begun to suspect after all the mental dreams he'd been having, that perhaps his body was just trying to keep his subconscious from taking over the tormenting.)

He tried to convince himself that Brienne didn't care at all what he said, if any of the others did. She certainly appeared that way. But then again, that spiteful little voice in the back of his mind reminded him; that day in the hospital, she'd showed him much more than he'd ever expected from her, and that made him begin to realize that everything he, and perhaps everyone else, assumed about Brienne Tarth was all a big mask.

He'd begun to realize that maybe everything he, and perhaps everyone else, assumed about himself was all a big mask. (Maybe he'd just been wearing it for so long it had melded with his face, so that even he couldn't tell where it ended.)

Either way, weekends came as a relief. He would not have to put up with school – only his siblings. (Quite frankly, he thought himself a martyr for that much, at least.) He woke on Saturday, after one of those nights that doesn't entail remembering any sleep at all, but must have involved sleep, because he woke up from something. Those kinds of night were quite frequent now. The glowing green numbers on his clock declared it _11:56._

Jaime Lannister groaned as he struggled to disentangle himself from rumpled covers with his left hand, and struggled to keep his right hand down when it instinctively wanted to help. He resolved the matter by kicking the covers into a twisted heap on the carpet, and managed to stand, and nudge the light on, though sufficient light filtered through his closed curtains anyway. Jaime decided even the temptation of food was not enough to draw him from his bed to face Cersei and Tyrion and his father so early, leaning over to clumsily grab for his new laptop and, after his left hand nearly dropped it twice, manoeuvre it into his lap as he resettled on the mattress. The laptop was brand-new, Apple. A consolation gift from his father – sort of an I'm-sorry-some-Wall-Academy-oaf-broke-you-so-have-this-shiny-machine-because-I-don't-know-how-to-produce-emotional-sentiment gift. He was eternally glad. He'd been after one of these for months. (There were certain perks to being extraordinarily wealthy.)

He clicked it on, typing in his password and opening Google, tossing his head awkwardly to remove the dishevelled golden hair from his face. The thing was up and running within seconds; he would not have had the patience for any slower gadget. He opened his emails, hoping for something to brighten his spirits, and scrolled down. A few newsletters from his school. Jaime groaned theatrically for the benefit of becoming Jaime Lannister instead of Sleepy Moron, before opening them dutifully. Blah blah blah, nonsense, boring, nonsense. Upcoming match this, new lab equipment that. Something about an extra-credit camping trip along the Trident river. Boring, nonsense, boring. Blah blah blah. Dominos Pizza vouchers. He saved that email, and skipped past the next two school ones. One with attached holiday pictures from Aunt Genna.

And then one that made him stop in his tracks. An email notification from Facebook.

_Hi, Jaime_

_Remember the event **Rhaegar's Halloween Party **is coming up!_

And a few links to his Facebook. Jaime followed them, frowning and groaning. Sure enough, the first thing he saw to pop up on his feed was Ashara Dayne, updating her status – _Shopping for Prince T's party tonight! __J - With **Elia Martell**_. As he scrolled down his feed, it was mostly dominated by proclamations about the party, and pictures of people's costumes. Well, he said costumes; really it was half-lingerie nonsense and animal ears for the girls (excluding the majority, who'd opted out of costuming), and plastic fangs for the boys (excluding the majority, who'd opted out of costuming.)

Jaime shut the laptop immediately, and harshly. What with everything else going on, he'd completely forgotten about Rhaegar's Halloween party. And gladly! As if he needed the hassle of making himself look just that extra bit godly, and alcohol and crappy greasy party food (although knowing the near-Lannister riches of the Targaryens, the food was probably going to actually be very nice) was hardly going to help improve his current state as a handless insomniac. If he'd ever felt less like celebrating, he didn't remember.

No, he wouldn't fret about this – he was _Jaime freaking Lannister_, and if he didn't want to do something, he was most certainly not going to do it.

He'd leave the partying (rather, glaring at Lyanna Stark) to Cersei. (He assumed Tyrion wouldn't go – despite his relentless dedication to very underage drinking, Rhaegar Targaryen's famed house parties were hardly his little brother's haunt.) He resolved to stay in abed all day, and not get dressed, and not sort out his hair or anything.

Jaime, rubbing the lingering sleepiness from his eyes, and meandered out into the hallway, closing his door behind him. Before venturing into the land of downstairs, he went to the bathroom to splash his face with cold water, cupped from the faucet, just to wake himself up more. It worked, and he was blinking the chilly water from his eyes, drying it from the ends of his bed-tangled golden hair.

He entered the spacious kitchen to the acrid stench of burnt bacon and winced, going instead to the fridge, rummaging around and salvaging a half of yesterdays egg sandwich. It took him a while to realize that the god-awful stink was eminating from where Cersei was standing at the cooker, brandishing a grease-gleaming spatula. She was staring at him with ice in her jade glare, lips pressed so tightly together they near disappeared.

"I feel like I've done something else to offend you, by that look, but I don't know what. Care to enlighten me?" Jaime turned like a guilty man, seating himself languidly at the polished kitchen table (The Lannister kids ignored the dining room when possible.) and peeling and picking away yesterday's tinfoil, crumpling it into a ball and crushing the half sandwich into his mouth in one. Cersei took that moment to conveniently explode.

"_Something to offend me_! Seven bloody hells, Jaime, I have been _slaving_ away making breakfast _all morning_. Dad's out, Chataya's on holiday leave, and I decided I'd play the good child and cook something nice and you come down here and blatantly ignore my efforts, stuffing your pathetic face with –"

Jaime chewed and swallowed, with some exertion, throwing the tinfoil ball up with his left hand and promptly dropping it, cursing. He hadn't even been aware that Chataya (the latest in a long, long line of cooks and cleaners) had been granted holiday leave."I'm _blatantly ignoring your efforts_ because your efforts smell as appetizing as pig shit."

A laugh behind them heralded Tyrion's entrance, already up and dressed and clean, tossing an apple from hand to hand as was his odd breakfast custom, and Cersei gave a sharp deathly glare to both her brothers that would send anyone else withering and crumpling. As much as she tolerated Jaime, she despised Tyrion, who merely smiled shrewdly at her as he drew up a chair. "Hello, dear siblings. Cersei, take no notice, Jaime, don't be cruel – that's an insult to the pigs and you know it."

Jaime grinned and nodded acceptingly. Cersei threw her spatula so furiously at the youngest Lannister's head that Jaime thought it like to take it clean off if Tyrion hadn't ducked so swiftly. Tyrion was adept at ducking things by now, particularly metal objects sailing toward his face, Jaime had begun to notice. After living with Cersei all your life, that was a trait one developed. Cersei was prone to throwing things at her irritators faces – whatever she was holding, most likely. Jaime had learnt it far wiser to insult his twin when she held a balled sock pair, or a toothbrush, than a cooking implement or knife. And her hairbrushes were surprisingly hard. (Although with the sheer amount of hours Cersei dedicated to her precious hair, Jaime would not have expected anything less.)

After Cersei swallowed down her swill of a breakfast out of sheer stubborn rage, Jaime rose and declared himself for his bed again. He'd go play some Fifa – if he couldn't actually play football in the real world, at least he still could in the magical land of pixels. Maybe watch a movie. Attempt to sleep. Eat. He'd begun to quite treasure his upcoming day of procrastination. (He wasn't going to mention the homework.)

And at that, Cersei, who'd been mid-dialling one of her stupid friends to chatter about nonsense for seventy two hours, set down her phone quite harshly on the kitchen side and stared at him. "You're what?"

"I'm going to my bedroom, it is _my bedroom_. But I'm getting the feeling there's something less fun for me to do down here…?"

"Oh no no." Cersei interjected, frowning, stepping hastily towards him. "You've got to get ready for Rhaegar's party."

"No I don't; you see, I'm not going. And even if I was, it's –" His eyes flickered momentarily to the gilt clock hanging above the gleaming kitchen window. "Twenty to one, and the party doesn't start until half nine." To his absolute horror, his twin sister stared at him as if he'd just kicked an injured puppy. Or maybe proved her point. It was hard to tell with Cersei, queen of the injured-puppy-kickers.

"But what do you mean you're not going?"

"I mean I'm not going to be there. Are you going to explain why this is a problem for you or…?" Cersei stared at him, flinty eyes almost tinged with a hint of panic. It gave Jaime the unsettling notion that he was to be a piece in one of her absurd plans.

"Because! Because you have to be there. Come on, I'll help you sort out what you're going to wear…" And then she had his wrist snatched up in her manicured talons, his _bad_ hand's wrist, mind, which utterly _killed_, and was dragging him, wincing, out into the hallway. _Yes, _Jaime decided, _definitely one of her plots. She'd not care half so much if it was anything else._ He snatched his hand away from his twin with some pain, swearing it out as much, and yet accompanying her up the stairs anyway, mostly out of curiosity. When she went determinedly to pull open his bedroom door, he started, and the sighed, following her in. Just her being in his bedroom was a violation of her own treasured house rules. He felt uneasy at another person being in there – like he had something to hide, even though he didn't. (Everything he had to hide was trapped in his own head anyway.) Even so, the moment Cersei stepped into his darkened room, she recoiled, wrinkling her pretty little nose and glaring at him with lingering revulsion. "Jaime, this nest stinks to the seven hells, clean it up."

"You don't _command _me, Cers. Relax. And explain to me what in the name of the seven is going on."

She sniffed haughtily, before perching precariously on the end of his bed, as if touching anything would contaminate her. (Cersei lived her whole life out like that, really; living and judging things as if she were a superior being and anything less than her godly standards would dirty her.) "Well. I had thought to include you in a wonderful scheme that ends with you in a relationship that profits everyone –"

Jaime liked the sound of that not at all. "Cersei, please, for everything else you do, _never_ presume to make me a part of your idiotic conspiring." He paused, considering. "Who's the girl?"

Cersei stiffened. (Well. Stiffened more so. He'd not thought that possible.) "Lyanna Stark."

And then it all made such clear sense to him. She was still at her mental fantasies of tearing Lya-and-Rhaegar apart and stealing the pieces all to herself. As if. "No. Absolutely not, Cersei."

"Why not?" She demanded. "She's hardly the most attractive thing, but I've heard that for some abstract reason a lot of you boy types find her… more than adequate. And she plays football like you do – or did when you were of any use to the team – and she –"

It was the _or did when you were of any use to the team_ that really set him off. "Enough. I'm not going to try to get off with Lyanna fucking Stark, least of all at a function I'm not going to, so you can badger poor Rhaegar into something he quite clearly wants no part of. You know, it might be something of a slap in the face to hear, but somebody ought to let you know – not everybody on this planet's attracted to you, particularly not Rhaegar Targaryen!" He sighed. Lyanna Stark was pretty gorgeous, but she was rather like a stupidly annoying little sister to him. He'd never even considered her in that way. And plus, he actually did have vestiges of respect for Rhaegar himself. And for himself!

"Fine. But you have to go."

"Why?"

"Because I say so!"

"And that of course makes it final and undeniable." Jaime muttered. He'd meant it sarcastically but Cersei looked at him as if he'd proven a point, bloody mental witch.

"Maybe you should go, big brother." A familiar voice put in from the doorway. Jaime turned to find the last of his privacy invaded and smashed to pieces by Tyrion, leaning against the glossy doorframe and eating a chicken leg. "Blow away the cobwebs. You could meet somebody there. It really can't be good for Mr Golden Quarterback's reputation for his dwarf kid brother to have a girlfriend before him."

Although that actually did strike a nerve, Jaime groaned and rolled his eyes theatrically, sighing and throwing his hands up. "Why is everybody in my room? Get out of my room!"

"I'm not in your room. Look. And I was just beginning to think we were even better good friends than before." Tyrion countered. Cersei said nothing but continued to glare dully at each of her brothers. "Go to the party, Jaime. You wouldn't want to miss seeing Cersei shamed by the Prince now, would you?"

That did seem inviting. And the chance to maybe enjoy himself as he hadn't truly, deeply, since his injury at the match against the Wall Academy Crows. Maybe he could try and mend things with Robert B. (And he was sort of fuming about the Tyrion-girlfriend thing. But he was hardly going to talk about that.) "I'm not promising anything." Jaime promised, leaving to go to the bathroom. As he shut the bathroom door he yelled out, one last time; _And get out of my room!_

Within seconds he heard a sharp banging on the bathroom door, and Cersei was shouting at him through the wood. "You need to shave, Jaime, you look like Robert Baratheon and it looks stupid!"

"Shut up, Cersei!"

He heard Tyrion chuckle, and was still glaring and muttering to himself as he did indeed fish out his razor from the bathroom cabinet. Once he'd shaved, he decided to occupy himself with a shower, and, to his disgust, the moment he exited the bathroom, hair dripping across the plush carpet, wrapped in a towel with his rumpled pyjama bottoms and t-shirt thrown over his shoulder, Cersei pounced on him.

"Right, I've picked out some things for you to try on –"

"For Seven's sake, Cersei!" Jaime yelled, exhausted, elbowing her out of the way as he sought refuge in his room, untouched but for the clothing laid across his bed, and slammed the door in his sisters face. Loudly. He'd all but given up on keeping people out of his bedroom. Bedrooms, he reflected, should be a private sanctuary for one person and one person alone's touching. He ignored the clothes on his bed, opting for jeans and a crimson hoodie instead, which he dressed himself in quite awkwardly (he'd not yet fully mastered dressing himself with a sling-bound dominant hand), reluctantly pulling open the curtains and kicking away the football and socks that littered his floor. He piled his duvet beside his wardrobe and stared at the clothes his twin had laid out for him. Stupid stuff with designer tags – more noticeable designer tags; no matter how much he didn't notice, most clothes owned by a Lannister were burdened with designer tags – that had been bought by his father or whichever housekeeper they'd had then, and that he'd never worn or had any intention of wearing. They'd have to have been buried very deep in his wardrobe. Cersei had had to have dug very deep in his wardrobe. "Cersei, stay out of my stuff, for the last fucking time!"

"I'm trying to do a nice thing, Jaime, you moron!"

"Yeah, well –" Jaime started as he opened his door, shaking out his wet hair with his left hand, and then winced and swore as he was blinded by the vivid flash on Cersei's camera phone. "_What in gods name are you doing, Cersei?!"_

She smiled smugly, turning away and tapping rapidly on the screen. "I'm just doing a little test on Facebook. Check yourself if you want to, like you keep saying, privacy is so important in the teenage life."

Cursing his sister for a lunatic bitch, he opened up Facebook on his laptop and found himself tagged in a rather unflattering – not that, of course, Jaime freaking _Lannister_ could look anything shy of glorious in a picture – shot of himself grimacing in the glaring flash, sodden golden hair pooling water on the shoulders of his wrinkled zip-up hoodie. Cersei's caption was one simple word – _Before._ But, being Cersei, she'd commented on her own picture moments later. _Thoughts? To be compared to the after shot once I'm done with him_. He slammed the laptop shut, not for the first time that day. And sought Cersei, fuming, not for the first time that day.

She was sitting innocently on her bed, rubbing cotton wool vigorously over her now-half scarlet lacquered nails. "Cersei Lannister, why in the seven stinking hells have you just posted that?"

His sister glanced up, irritated. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Facebook! _Before_!"

"Oh, that," She smiled, tossing the damp cotton wool into her wastepaper bin. Stained with nail polish, it looked almost like blood. Cersei rose, infuriatingly pleased with herself. (Then again, when wasn't Cersei infuriatingly pleased with herself?) "If you want the picture taken down, all you have to do is let me sort out the _after_ shot."

"Why are you so desperate to give me a makeover like I'm your little doll?"

"Why are you so desperate not to let me? Do you like having an ugly stump of a baby brother with a girlfriend before you?" She asked softly, grinning.

He glared at her, mouth tight, running through the plusses and minuses of going to the party, and going to the party bedecked in Cersei's creations. He'd no doubt be drawn into her treacherous scheming, he didn't doubt for one second that that was what this was about. His hand wouldn't benefit from any dancing or riotry. But if he got drunk, that'd help dull the pain, and help him sleep. Damn what came afterward. He did want to sort out his friendship with Baratheon again – they didn't even have to be friends, just tolerable, not-awkward teammates again. It'd give him a chance to forget his stupid confused conscience; and maybe actually enjoy himself for once. He closed his eyes, shocked at what he was about to condemn himself to. "Fine. Do your worst."

And that was how, at eight thirty, an hour before he had to be anywhere anyway, Jaime stood before the full-length, perfectly polished gilt mirror in Cersei's bedroom, with his golden hair all combed and teased – he'd protested that he was not in fact a gay man and hence did not need his hair touched at all; Cersei was having none of it and promptly attacked him with hair products; he'd not thought one person could own so many – with his jeans pristine, and his new Timberlands, and Cersei smirking and tugging at his attire with her phone in her hand. His sling was still stubbornly sticking out of his groomed and golden appearance, and yet somehow, if he stood _just _so, it seemed to work. He'd long since abandoned his I-loathe-this attitude for something more arrogant and Jaime-ish. (He said long since. Really, it was just since he stood in front of the mirror.) There was no point in it; not when you looked like he did. (He wouldn't call himself vain – he could simple acknowledge that he was an abnormally remarkably attractive human being and could even work a sling and cast as if he'd been born with it.)

His twin's flash clicked and clicked again, and she ordered him to turn, and he did, and she released him for the next hour until the party. He had no idea what she herself would be wearing, but could only pray it wasn't something so incredibly revealing that it made his eyes bleed. Tyrion, as he suspected, was refraining from attending – saying that he might make an appearance later, nothing more. Tywin had returned around late-afternoon, resigned to his study. He wouldn't be driving them to Rhaegar's, but he could hire them a cab. Not for the first or last time, Jaime was grateful for his astonishingly rich family.

By the time nine-thirty arrived and Cersei came downstairs thankfully covered in a coat, the cab had been delayed (although Jaime failed to see why it was needed, Rhaegar lived about four streets away.) and Cersei was fussing over this and that and Tyrion was laughing smugly. It took a good half hour, forty-five minutes before it finally arrived.

Jaime just rolled his eyes and sidled into the back seat, the night air pleasantly cool.

When they pulled up at Rhaegar's, the near Lannister-large house was pulsing with muffled music, laughter, and warm golden light spilling out across the luxurious porch. The copious front garden space was bedecked in Halloween decorations strings of paper lanterns and foil bats and dragons strung across windows, and intricately carved pumpkins littered the lawn. Cersei refused to be seen entering the party with her brother, and hence hung back a while, texting some idiot or another. And Jaime found himself on his teammates doorstep. He was glad to for once leave behind all his other hindering thoughts, of guilt and guts and Brienne Tarth, and just be.

Just be.

Jaime closed his eyes, took a breath that steeled himself for what was to come, and followed Rhaegar, greeting him jovially, inside.

**A/N ~ **I'm giving you a one-word spoiler. _Brienne._


	9. You're Eyes Are(Not That I'm Looking)

**The Adventures of Super Jock and Awkward Girl**

**A/N ~ **I'm particularly pleased with this chapter after the Cersei-annoyance-centred last chapter. Primarily because this one was so fun to write, and stuff happens. Funny stuff, fighting stuff, and, more importantly _OTP STUFF._ It's finally here! The long-awaited party chapter!

**Disclaimer ~ **I own neither A Song of Ice and Fire, the characters, or any of the food/drink brands mentioned in this chapter, or the music either. If I did _The Winds of Winter_ would entail Jaime and Brienne getting the flip over themselves and realizing they're madly in love, and riding around butchering the Bloody Mummers. And also Daenerys would get a move on and Sansa would kill Baelish and be Queen in the North, and Cersei would finally have all her mental issues contribute to a breakdown involving her killing herself spectacularly and dramatically with a touch of redemption. And Jon would be there somehow. I've waffled, haven't I?

**Coming Up… **Jaime gets well and truly drunk, Lyanna makes ridicule of Cersei's latest mental plot, Robert can't stay out of a fight, pentagons are not resolved in the slightest, there are breakups and food fights and a house is trashed, Rhaegar tries to calm everyone down and fails, and Jaime finds unexpected salvation and unexpected thoughts with an unexpected guest. **Find out in The Adventures of Super Jock and Awkward Girl!**

**Warning: **This chapter was indeed originally called _Rhaegar's Disaster Party_. Not to give anything away but it truly is a disastrous (and drunk) evening.

** 9.****Your Eyes Are Astonishing (Not That I Was Looking)**

He knew it was going to be a truly spectacular house party when he walked in to the truly enormous living room to find the end filled with a drinks-and-food table so crowded that said drinks and food spilled out over the pushed-aside coffee table, kitchen, and shelves.

All around, as Jaime Lannister cradled his sling carelessly, and pushed through the shockingly copious crowd, he was clapped on the shoulder and cheered and greeted, and a can of beer was shoved into his hand. The house was lit with the same paper lanterns that decorated the exterior grounds, only a lot more of them, their strings tangled and clustered absolutely everywhere. Their rainbow of a palette gave the light they cast soft coloured hues, myriads of spots of sapphire and pink and emerald and purple, autumnal orange and lemon yellow. The thumping dance music thundering through the sprawling, packed downstairs clashed violently with the raucous laughter and classic rock drifting from up the modernly curling staircase.

He wove his way through the pressing torrent of dancing kids, moving as one tide, around into the vast, gleaming kitchen, similarly lit. Despite the added crowds, Jaime knew his way around Rhaegar's house well, having met there for match after-parties and before-match pep talks, and such many a time. The kitchen sides and the island in the middle of the glinting tiles both were crammed with red plastic cups and bottles and paper plates and plastic cutlery, packets of food, some tipped out and overflowing from big plastic bowls. Rhaegar was taking no chances with his father's actual silverware, Jaime noted – smart. He assumed wherever Aerys was, he'd taken Rhaegar's baby brother – Viserys? – there too. A screaming toddler was hardly going to add to the atmosphere.

In the kitchen, Jaime set down his unopened beer and opted instead for filling a cup with Pepsi Max; even _he_ didn't lack respect enough to start drinking so early on in the night. And as he did so, Melara Hetherspoon materialized beside him, clearly drunk, dissolving into random fits of giggles in the patchy vivid lights, touching his hair and prodding him in a most irritating manner. He managed to disentangle himself from her long enough to flee upstairs and into one of the guest rooms, dark and lightless, cup held clumsily in his inept left hand, where Victarion Greyjoy told him the coats were being dumped. He gladly rid himself of his new brown leather jacket, tossing it atop the murky pile on the guest bed. It took him a while to manage it without causing himself searing agony from his wounded hand, but thankfully there was nobody there to see him but the couple making out passionately on the other bed, and they weren't paying any attention to _him_, that was for sure.

As he stalked back out into the first-floor landing, after his idiot limb sloshed Pepsi across the carpet, his attention was snagged by a chanting in a nearby room, the chanting almost in time with _Living on a Prayer_, playing loudly from inside. The foil-pumpkin laden door was so wide open so as to allow him sight of what was going on inside – a ring of kids were bouncing and cheering and laughing and drinking around a ping-pong table, where Robert Baratheon and one of the Kettleblack brothers (after going to school with them for years Jaime still struggled to tell them apart) were rapidly bringing down their paddles. It took Jaime a second glance to realize the ball they were whacking back and forth was indeed a meatball. He laughed to himself, shaking his head at his mental friends, and joining the throng, humming along to the song. He was quickly swallowed up into the crowd, hearing a dozen or so people shout his name and drunken greetings, but the thumping attention was primarily fixed on the pair in the middle. _Ro-bert, Ro-bert, Ro-bert!_

After a few more hits, and a particularly harsh one from Kettleblack that Jaime thought would crush the meatball, said meatball instead sailed toward Robert's face – he opened his mouth and as he caught it between his teeth the cheer that erupted all around him was truly staggering. _Whoa, nearly halfway there._ "I'm reigning champion, you scar-faced bastard! Who's next? I'll take you!" Robert was clearly remarkably drunk. _Ro-bert, Ro-bert, Ro-bert_.

"Watch yourself, Baratheon, with all those meatballs – don't want to be getting tubby again, do you? You know you're prone to it," Jaime called and Robert turned to his direction, snatching a red plastic cup spilling something or other and downed its contents in one, laughing raucously. Meryn Trant (Jaime admired his brute force on the pitch, and wondered if his thick skull actually contained anything off the pitch) stepped up, snatching Kettleblack's paddle. Brandon Stark blew sharply over the rim of a bottle to make a loud noise that sounded nothing like a whistle, and threw in a fresh meatball. Jaime grinned and wandered out, muttering – he'd enjoy that particular sport properly when he was drunk enough to understand the non-existent rules.

He stopped to lounge about with Arthur Dayne and Gerold Hightower on the landing a while, discussing this and that, and fended off a quick hug from a very drunken Garlan Tyrell, before running into his sister, leaning smugly against the wall beside one of the many bathrooms, in a transparent crimson wisp. She looked ultimately too pleased with herself for his liking – even by her standards, that glint in her eyes looked dangerous. "Cersei," He was grinning despite himself and his doubts – when in doubt, grin, indeed. It was better to make life a joke than let life make a joke out of you. "Boiled any of Rhaegar's bunnies yet?"

"Whatever makes you think that, Jaime? It's not Rhaegar I so despise." She must have heeded his words at least – her expression suddenly more placid, with only the merest hint of self-satisfied undertones. "You'll see." She finished lightly, with a look that made him feel rapidly unwelcome and rapidly uncomfortable. Whatever she'd done, he was sure he'd know.

Hoping not to be associated with his mad drunken twin, Jaime ventured back downstairs, where a cluster of people sitting on and around a kitchen table were playing some sort of drinking game in the shifting lights. Billows and bursts of strident laughter and screams, and sloshing drowned out the thunderous pulse of electronic music. "Ah, now what's going on at the _wasted table_?" Jaime asked, seating himself on the edge of the table and delving into a nearby bowl, coming up with a handful of crisps. Laughter.

"Drinking game. You can't –" Ellaria Sand, lying across the table playing with a glazed party ring between her fingers, hiccupped halfway through her explanation, much to the amusement of her just-as-drunk companions. " – Say the words _yes_ or _no _–" In an eruption of guffawing giggles, her comrades sent up a multitude of bellowing cheers, saying that she'd just said them both and had to drink. Ellaria laughed and grabbed absently at a nearby plastic cup, half crushing it in her grip as she raised it over her mouth to pour in, so that a great deal of its reeking contents sloshed across her shoulder and her face and her friend and the table. Nobody seemed to notice. Jaime decided he'd best leave that lot and return when – if – he got truly smashed.

And then he heard, faintly, a muffled _holy shit!_ from upstairs and knew that whatever Cersei had planned had come to fruition. Feeling sort of responsible, by no fault of his own, Jaime tore up the stairwell, and saw Cersei looking more put out than thrilled – not what he was expecting. Not by a long shot. When Cersei usually wanted to do something, more often than not it happened and happened just as she wanted it to.

Instead, Cersei was fuming, irate, as Lyanna Stark grinned and fell about hooting, swearing with shock and joy. It didn't take Jaime that long to realize what had gone on, purely because Lyanna's once-dark hair was now a dusky, but bright, unquestionable blue. "Oh, motherfuck, I look brilliant, I'm like a winter rose or something! Shit, thank the motherfucking gods for whoever came up with this! Who was it? Who was it? Wow! Dude! Rhaegar, look!"

Cersei, that conniving little nutcase had been tampering with whatever hair products Lya kept at Rhaegar's, doubtless. Nonetheless, being Lyanna, she'd obviously love it. An old quote came to mind that would have helped Cersei pull off something of this scale but actually have her enemy in ruins – _know your enemies._ His sister quite clearly knew nothing of Lyanna Stark, by this. He sort of wished Tyrion was there –he'd have wet himself.

As word around the rather enormous house spread, guests gathered in their dozens to laugh, puke, and congratulate Lyanna on her bold, flattering new trait. Cersei had vanished. Jaime didn't want to know where to. But while the fuss had gathered around _whodunit _to Lyanna's hair, what people didn't notice was the shouting and swearing eminating from somewhere across the landing.

In fact, people were so drunk and/or amused, absorbed, to notice this that it wasn't until Brandon Stark and Petyr Baelish came crashing through a door, screaming that they did.

It took approximately a tenth of a second before everyone was yelling _fight, fight, fight_, in unison.

"You slimy foul twice-damned bastard, I swear, Littlefuckingfinger, I'm going to –" Brandon gave an almighty roar and his fist crashed into the smaller boy's face full on. Jaime heard a sickeningly pleasing crunch and blood spurted from Baelish's nose. Jaime hadn't even know Pathetic Petyr was here. Petyr spat blood and smiled smugly.

"You're going to what?"

Brandon hollered something extremely crude and rather unintelligible and hit him again, lunging and scratching, a cannonball of cold Stark fury. Petyr started fighting back but barely – Brandon was clearly the master here. "If you _ever_ tell _anyone_ anything _like that again_, you're going to wish you'd never been born!"

The two brawling boys fought like that, tooth and nail, bruising and bleeding and blackening all down the stairs, into the living room, closely pursued by the beaming, chanting crowd that drowned out the struggling trance music, and it must have been a good ten minutes of that, swearing and screaming and kicking, before Catelyn Tully flew into the room looking flustered, eyes flashing. "_Stop this nonsense right now! Stop it, you _stupid_ bastards, stop it, by the gods!" _ And she threw herself into the middle of them, as Ned Stark magically materialized and clung to his big brothers' arm, talking quietly with him and pulling him just so slightly back. A loud groan of disappointment went up from the crowd.

Petyr, cowering on the carpet with a split lip, bloody nose that Jaime, from experience, judged to be wonderfully broken, and both eyes looking as though they'd be panda-esque in a few days; Catelyn breathing heavily between them, red hair floating astray, eyes cold and hard, hand out; Brandon with his goody-goody little brother on his arm, spitting blood, black hair limp with sweat, and swearing, under his breath.

Jaime had never enjoyed a party so much.

Though jaunty music still beat on and on, there seemed to be an eerie stillness to the room. Jaime was about to make some kind of inappropriate joke to smash the sudden cover of ice, before Cat spoke just as he opened his mouth. "I'd rather not do this in front of everybody. If you'd all please mind your _own business_ and _clear the hell off_ I think Brandon and Petyr and I have some things to discuss!"

Nobody moved. Cat gave a half-furious, half-pleading look. Nobody moved.

(Even though Jaime was pretty sure that look would obliterate most people.)

"Alright, fuck off, everybody! Go back to your knitting!" Lyanna yelled from the back of the room.

A collective murmur went up as clusters of kids broke off from the throng and drifted into the kitchen, where the talking, screaming, laughing and dancing (and drinking, copious drinking) seemed to be resuming almost immediately. Jaime had never quite been so glad as he was then, that he'd not missed the party. (He'd never liked his twin so much.) (She'd made him do it, really.)

Jaime followed them reluctantly, regrouping with Arthur Dayne as they speculated and marvelled over just how much Robert Baratheon really could eat. A few of them set up a miniature game of flipping a gumball into a cup (more often than not filled with some sort of alcohol or soft drink, or both) with a cracker from the end of the table. After, maybe, forty five minutes or so, Ned Stark appeared in the kitchen, and was immediately near bowled over by crowds clustering around him, eager for dirt on the fight. Jaime still had enough self respect so as not to go grovelling to that self-righteous moron for gossip, instead hanging back with Arthur and Robbie and Elia, and, later, Rhaegar and Gerold. Word around the party was that Petyr had been going about telling everyone who would listen that he'd slept with Catelyn. Brandon found out – and the rest was common knowledge. Cat herself had taken off immediately after she'd apparently put Baelish and Brandon in their places; an example Littlefinger soon followed, stalking out like a bloodied cat with its tail between its legs.

Jaime pitied Tully. It must be so hard, after all, to have only two (possibly three) people desperately in love with you. He was used to the entire student body.

Once the unspokenly shocked aftermath of the Brandon-Cat-Petyr fight had faded, everyone seemed to agree on getting completely and utterly piss-drunk. So when the next group of party-goers trilled the doorbell, Jaime actually felt the smallest pin of pity prick at him.

Renly arrived in all his style, looking handsome and fashionable and extremely drunk, throwing apart his arms widely and embracing Rhaegar when he came to the door, cheering. A cheer went up at his arrival, too – say what you would about him, the boy had enough charm and charisma to have friends in every corner. (He was no Jaime, of course, Jaime thought sourly – but then, who was?) With him was a curly-haired and girl-pretty freshman named Loras, (Garlan and Willas' little brother or something), a whole gaggle of others, and, trailing dejectedly behind them – Jaime's never-ending doom.

Why he felt so guilty around Brienne Tarth was no mystery, even to him anymore – he'd spoken to her, once, in that hospital, for a considerable period of time, with respect and dignity and she'd actually laughed, sort of, once – something nobody had ever thought Brienne Tarth would ever do, least of all him. But was he _really to blame?_ He'd been _drugged_ for crying out loud! Drugged! He really shouldn't feel bad about going back to his normal response to the towheaded plank. He'd never been anything else to her but that one, drugged time. And maybe he had gotten worse since. But what had really changed? What had he, really, to feel guilty about?

Whatever it was, it stopped him for making the cursory –_ Someone obviously doesn't need a costume_. Somebody else would overdo that for him, doubtless.

Instead, he decided to wash away his troubles.

In Rhaegar Targaryen's beer supply.

"Drink, drink, drink, drink!"

The dappled, colourful lighting seemed to swirl and shift, contorting and dancing in time with the rhythm of the music, and Jaime found comfort in the taste of good beer as it slopped down his throat. As he drained yet another cup, a cheer went up and Jaime crushed the red plastic between his fingers. Vestiges of beer drops speckled his arm. They were sticky. He made to brush them away. He didn't _feel_ drunk at all, not enough, not yet. But he was pretty sure he looked it.

"One more, one more and you beat Rob B, Jaime!" Arthur cheered, and then spluttered with laughter. At a questioning look, Arthur explained, still sputtering, "Rob _B_, Jai_me_! It rhymes. I'm a poet, wow."

Jaime snorted and swiped clumsily at the final cup, red plastic gleaming in the lighting. The cheering of the guys echoed the thumping of the music. _And the trumpets, they go._ He downed it in one, wiping his mouth on his wrist and holding up the cup in triumph. "It appears I am the champion, naturally." Jaime wasn't a lightweight.

"Screw that!" Robert hollered, and then belched quite loudly. For a moment it appeared as if he was going to be sick – Ashara actually scooted smartly out of the way – and then he grabbed at a sausage roll with a inept grasp, and stuffed the whole thing in his mouth, chewed, paused, swallowed. "To the seventh hell with all of you golden-haired shits, make way for the new record holder!" Elia Martell leaned over the table lightly and handed him a cup. Robert drank deeply, splashing a considerable amount on his shirt, and tossing the cup into the air. Davos Seaworth caught it and kicked it away, to much cheering.

"Charming, as _always_, Robert," Jaime smirked and decided to slip away for a breather. He found that a few well-timed interludes aided drinking competitions. Unlike Robert, who preferred to holler until he was scarlet, and make no breaks in his steady, messy downing. Now there was a weathered alcoholic in the making, if Jaime had ever seen one.

Gerold Hightower then caused a slight distraction by throwing up violently all over Rhaegar's tiled floor.

Jaime slunk through the crowded doorway. Giggling screams and thumping drifted enticingly down from the first-floor landing, where several lip-locked couples leaned against the wall. And, carefully arranging his dead hand, he would have passed right on by, if his quick gaze had not snagged on one such pair – the male of which was both very familiar and very short. Jaime grinned and tossed his eyes exasperatedly as he tore up the staircase, using the twining , ornate banister to steady himself. "Tyrion! You never told me you got here!"

His little brother, clothes littered with peanut shells, withdrew from a sort-of pretty girl who was short, but not short enough, and hence sitting cross-legged, and he grinned, turning around and waddling over to him with his hands thrown open. "I was going to, but something else caught my attention first," The girl, who'd crawled back over and was giggling drunkenly as she chewed on a peanut, tugging at Tyrion's arm, murmured something unintelligible in his brother's ear and succeeded in pulling him back down on the floor beside her. Tyrion laughed and ate the peanut she was attempting to feed him. How old was he, anyway, now? Fourteen? Fifteen?

Well. He was a Lannister, alright.

"Brother, I want you to meet my dear, dear acquaintance _Tysha._" Tyrion declared with a hiccup and a giggle, and a languid flick of a nutshell. "Tysha, this is my charming and moronic big brother Jaime. Do say hello, but I _am_ the brains, and I _am _the superior _in the cups_," He all but whispered the last phrase, snatching a cup of something and downing it in one. Tysha laughed. Jaime didn't recognize her – he suspected she sparingly attended the Sea Bottom Institute, nicknamed Flea Bottom. Most of the redneck kids from the other side of town skived there. "And I think that I am an extremely wonderful creature, don't you think, everyone? I am the king of everything, and Tysha and I were going to climb another floor and find the source of the enthrallingly pillow-fight-esque noises, before we got so distracted, care to join us, Jai –"

Halfway through saying his name, Jaime's little brother collapsed sideways on the carpet laughing, and Tysha grinned and attempted to drag him into the nearest room, peanut bag discarded, contents spilling out across the landing. Jaime rolled his eyes. And Tyrion was supposed to be the academic one.

He turned to venture back down the staircase and rejoin the drinking haze, purely for the amusement of watching a rare species such as the Robert Baratheon roaring drunk. Jaime was restrapping the Velcro on his slung forearm and focusing on that as he paced himself carefully on the winding steps, so it was really no wonder he almost walked right into Brienne Tarth.

But it was even less of a wonder when considered that, at a step back and a second puzzled glance, Brienne herself was doing nothing but lurking on the lower stair, sprawling hand hovering on the carved banister, motionless and frowning. At first blush her expression would've given away nothing, and yet her lips seemed almost aggressively pressed together, so much so they all but disappeared, and her enormous azure eyes seemed to be cracking flint. Before Jaime made some offensive comment, he involuntarily followed her fixated blue gaze to Renly, on the landing, passionately making out with the youngest Tyrell boy.

_Ah._

He glanced back and forth from the frozen Brienne to the frantic couple atop Rhaegar's landing. Someone somewhere was attempting, and failing, to beat box, and the sounds clashed violently with the shifting soft lights and the persistently thumping music. Jaime motioned to skirt around his lab partner. "Are you going to block the stairway all evening or get a closer look?"

Brienne seemed startled for a fifteenth of a second, before taking a deliberate and yet stumbling step back and fixing him with a harsh glare. She was staring at him with more revulsion and resentment than she ever had before, which was quite shocking, considering. And all he'd done was ask an innocent question. Bloody fucking mental bitch. "Oh, come now. You can't mean to tell me you didn't know?" He smiled and then loathed himself for it.

"_Shut up, Lannister_." Though her tone was careful and measured, he easily picked up on the tremble of fury beneath.

"Really? Mr _It's A Brooch, Not A Pin_? You honestly thought pretty-boy Baratheon was straight? Or maybe you just thought you could change his sexuality? You're man enough, granted, more so than the little flower boy whose company he's so –"

"Shut _up_."

This time, he could tell that the ice topping her tone was thinner, near to cracking, and the boiling rage beneath, threatening to topple it. It was quite enjoyable. Or maybe that was just the booze. Either way. Fun fun fun.

"I just find it hard to believe that you could possibly –"

"Of course you'd find it hard to believe." Tarth was talking through her teeth and Jaime knew it. "You're nothing but a mindless future-washout with no regard for anyone but yourself, and I'm willing to bet you've never kept to anything in your life. Now, if you don't mind –" She moved to push past him up the stairs. Instinct made him shove his arm out to stop her. She avoided his gaze, suddenly blotching a spectacular red. Her clumping freckles stood out stark against it.

Ouch.

There were a thousand things he immediately thought to reply with.

_I'm a Lannister, Tarth, Lannisters won't ever be washouts. We're too rich, you see. A concept probably unfamiliar to you, I'm sure._

_Ooh, touchy. So the plank does have nerves to be hit on. _

_You're taking out your frustrations on the wrong mindless future washout, it's him that you ought to be berating for absolutely nothing._

_Come on, Tarth, reverse the roles. Loras possesses pretty looks and a cock. You – well, you don't have either, do you? _

Instead Jaime grabbed a thick arm with his retarded left hand and spun her away, leading her fuming down the last few stairs. She protested and he thought she might've called him a word he never expected her to even know, until he swung her her arm back to her, resenting that it worked better than his did, and glaring half-heartedly at her, tossing his head for the _sole purpose_ of removing a straying golden curl from his face.

"_What_, Lannister?" Tarth demanded sullenly. _Sullen, and yet she still casts glances back toward the landing of Renloras. For the first time ever those pretty eyes are giving her away, stupid bitch._ Jaime considered. Half of his mind knew very clearly what he wanted to do, and intended to do so, and yet the other half was protesting that that was A; stupid, and B; stupid.

He sighed and relented to himself. "Fine. Come on." Reluctantly, Jaime yanked on her big arm again, nails digging and stalked through the throbbing throngs. She seemed to be following him, at least. And yet he was still entirely unsure of _what the fuck he was doing_. To himself, of course. Judging from the hospital experience, the aftermath of any civilized contact with Brienne Tarth was both torturous, full of regret and annoyance.

But he was absolutely fucking hammered, and that was as much to blame as the drugs were the last time.

And so Jaime led her through strings of chanting, dancing, drinking and generally mental laughing drunk kids through to the back door of Rhaegar's house, where Robert had once ran straight into the glass and passed out, where he'd spent so many days so many summers with so many people. It was weird that he wasn't with the same people now. The flawless panes had too been strung with Halloween décor. Jaime didn't give them a second glance as he shouldered the door open and greeted the brisk night air of the Targaryen's acre garden.

Tarth however, was not so easy.

Jaime was halfway out across the sprawling weedless expanse of patio before he realized Brienne was hanging back suspiciously, eyeing him coldly. He sighed, exasperated. Mental. "Well _come on_."

"How do I know this isn't some sort of joke?"

"Believe me, Tarth, if it was, you'd know."

She didn't move.

"Fine then. Stay there."

The next time he set off, Jaime didn't look behind him.

The Targaryens' were almost as rich as the Lannisters. Their patio, Jaime had always noted with wonder, had been arranged in the shape of a three-headed dragon, their lawn meticulously groomed, bushes shaped and trimmed. Though the thumping music still drifted from the hulking house, he could hear the intricate cogs of the world turning more smoothly here, the cricket's with their lullaby and the wind, whispering words of wisdom across sneering trees.

The air was shockingly still for October, but a few rogue breezes toying with his hair and the hem of his plaid shirt, though the reek of the oncoming cold was rife in his nostrils. (Cold had it's own smell, no matter what they said.) Dew winked on the grass, as slender blades reached to cling to his boots. He could see clearly; the moon was not yet full, but not far off. _Not far off_ enough so as to still brighten the world.

It took a while to reach the rash of apple trees that cast the illusion of ending Rhaegar's garden. Tarth, behind him, as he knew she would be, seemed to be missing the point, when he stopped abruptly in before the woody thatch. She stared at him, eyes accusatory. "You've brought me to trees for a reason, or –"

"Oh, shut _up_, woman." Jaime muttered. "Really. I'm sure you and the rest of the idiots drinking their parents' trust away are under the impression everything Rhaegar ends here. Well. As I'm sure you're well aware, as the star of Rhaegar's precious football team, I've spent _many_ a pre-game, post-game celebration here."

"I don't care for your reminiscing, Lannister –"

"I know you don't, you don't really care for much, do you? Do you have any hobbies aside from being a –" He was going off-track again. "I'm not here to reminisce, Tarth. I'm here to _show you_ something. Go on in through the trees." Brienne opened her mouth. "No, it's not trespassing, it's still Targaryen land, that's for sure." Motionless, Jaime nodded in the direction of the trees. "Go on. Go."

She regarded him with reserved coolness. "How do I know you're not going to –"

Jaime made a big show of over exasperation. "Have a little faith, woman."

"I just have the sense to have little faith in the famous _Jaime Lannister_."

"What's that got to do with – oh, shut up and walk. I'll be right on through. I can swear on my place on the team that there's no public humiliation involved here."

"Yes, and we all know _your_ oaths are solid gold –"

"_Walk._"

Brienne Tarth shot him a withering look and trudged on through the tree trunks. After a glance to make certain she was headed in the right direction, and a quick mutter of keeping straight, Jaime jogged over to the far fence, towering, splintering, and fumbled around until he found the switch, flipping it securely and adjusting it, as he'd watched Rhaegar do so many times.

And then he ran back through the trees. Even here, the music somehow found its way past the ringing in his ears. He walked to take his place beside the towheaded idiot herself. "So. What do you think?"

"I think if this is meant to –"

"It's not meant to mean anything, woman, so shut up and take it in."

It wasn't until after the words had fled him that he realized she might've been to say _do, _not mean. The Targaryen pool before them, with the lights adjusted just how the Prince had showed Jaime last summer, was a wonder to behold, thinly luminant waters lit from within in the scantily cloud-clad moonlight the tiles aglow in sable and russet, the tiles shaped like a dragon – _was_ a sight to behold. The Targaryen family had a bit of a thing with dragons. It was quite unnerving.

"Okay. Now if you don't mind, Lannister, I think I'm going to get my coat and go, because –"

He pushed her in without thinking. The pool was deep and she broke the still skin with an almighty splash that drowned even the music from the house so far behind them. She came up spluttering and bright red, and looking quite murderous. And for a split second he thought he ought to feel bad. Before, of course, he kicked off his Timberland boots and hastily discarding his hoodie, and his shirt and socks.

And then he threw himself, all impulse, jeans and t-shirt and all, into Rhaegar Targaryen's pool with disregard for himself, and Rhaegar, and the glowering Brienne Tarth, who had managed to rid herself of her rather enormous shoes and was depositing them over the edge, on the grass. She was about to haul herself out when Jaime sent a tidal wave of chlorine stinking water sloshing over her. Tarth glared and splashed violently back. He wasn't quite sure why.

It took quite a while of rather aggressive splashing before Jaime began to sort of think Tarth might actually be enjoying herself, in a weird sort of way.

"So, _Brienne_, what's your deal?"

"What?" She still looked at him with a cold reproachfulness that he knew meant she didn't trust him in the slightest, and the way she sunk down in the glowing water too. (Perhaps if the roles were reversed, he wouldn't trust him either.) Jaime rolled his eyes. The same jerky rubbish seemed to spurt from her mouth every time he wasted effort trying to engage her in conversation.

"I mean, why are you here, if you loathe us all as much as you'd have us believe. Renly?"

"Yes. And why not?" Tarth kept her tone defensive. Jaime inwardly congratulated her on her first ever speech of coherent confidence. Sort of. "He's my friend, and he invited me." Jaime knew what that meant – he was the one plus point to a torturous event her father probably forced her into.

He considered and decided against further pressure on the Renly front. Then he lost his footing on the tiles and slipped underwater momentarily, choking on chlorine. That made him laugh, for some abstract reason. _Wow, I'm drunk_. "Brienne, I'm very drunk right now; if I slip under again, please pull me out. No Lannister has ever drowned in a swimming pool and I don't mean to be the first." She nodded, and he was glad to be in the company of somebody more than completely sober.

As they both took respite in the pause in their watery war, Jaime's drunk mind struggled against reasonable thoughts and leaden musings somehow found their way through reasonless laughter and thunderstorm of clashing feelings. "Why do you hate me so much, anyway?"

"I – I don't hate you!" It was hard to tell in the moonlight, but knowing her, she was probably that ugly, blotchy red she was so prone to turning. Lie. He knew lies, even in his drunken stupor. He knew _lies_, she was _lying_, they all always _lied,_ he was surrounded by _liars._

"Don't be stupider than nature forced you to be, you hate me and I hate you too. I'm just obligated to know why." He was surrounded by liars. He _was_ a _liar_. He was such a _liar_. He was the biggest liar of them all. She was the only one who didn't lie, the only decent person around here, she shouldn't start, she shouldn't be like the rest of them.

"I – "

"Is it because I'm a cruel, self-adoring bastard?" Jaime leapt on to answer his own question. He didn't really think he'd asked to hear her answer; he didn't want to hear her answer. He just wanted to finally try and make some sense of his thoughts. "Because I am. I'm not denying it, and why should I? _Why should I?_ I'm a cruel, self-adoring bastard, but I'm still a good person, better than those arseholes back there. Because _everyone_'s cruel, Brienne, didn't anyone teach you that? We're all bastards trying not to be bastards – but we have to be bastards to hold our own against other bastards. Survival of the _fittest_, survival of the fittest! I adore myself, it's true, but don't you _dare_ think you have the right to judge me for that. I'm a shitty person because I have to be, all of us have to be, but I do love myself, because if I don't, if we don't, that's when it all falls apart and people can see in. If you looked like me, laughed like me, if you –" Jaime's drunken ramblings were interrupted by a hacking fit of phlegmy coughing. " – you'd love yourself too, when you don't you're admitting the cruelty and that you aren't the fittest, and you, you're open and dead and… By what right can they judge me, _by what right_?"

He didn't even know what he was talking about.

"If what you're saying is truly what you believe, Lannister, then you're a coward."

"_Coward?_"

"That you have to be a – bastard, or people will be bastards to you. You're just a scared little boy."

_She has steel in her spine,_ he suddenly knew. Maybe more even than him. Few people dared contradict him to his face. A further, near non-existent few people had the guts to contradict him to his face in a way that insulted him. _Though behind my back, I'm sure they speak freely enough._ She seemed concerned, suddenly, though still nigh on unreadable. "Lannister?"

"I don't know. I don't know shit since I broke this thing, Brienne, this thing!" He lifted his cast-bound hand with his left hand, sending water sloshing from it, waving it around. "This thing made me Jaime Lannister the Quarterback and now it's dead and useless for god knows how long." He dropped it back into the eerily-lit pool. It splashed, slightly, onto his still-damp face.

"Jaime, you're drunk."

"Yes."

"You've broken your hand, it's hardly advisable to –"

"Oh, _shut up_, woman! You don't get it, you're too _good_ and godly and _good_. You're considered vastly uninteresting and nobody wants you around but damn it, Brienne, you're _good, you're so good_. I don't understand how you do it, you're _good_, you're a good person, I don't get it, how, why, why?"

Brienne looked rather uncomfortable, put on the spot so suddenly. It took her a while before, staring mutedly down into the shifting waters, hair dripping, she responded quietly. "Jaime, we should get you out of here, you'll drown yourself if you're not careful. Drunken –"

"If you're so _good_, Brienne, why are you such a fucking fantastic football player? It requires anger and brutality and if you've got so many old-fashioned _morals_, why do you do it? You must be a remarkably angry person. I would be if I were you, but you're you, and you're good, so you must be okay with being good and nothing else… if you're so good, are you going to not doing anything?"

"Do anything to what? About what?"

"This." Jaime's drunkenly clouded mind somehow convinced him to brighten the mood. He dissolved into a sudden fit of hysterical laughter for some reason unfathomable even to himself, that hurt his throat as he lunged forth in the cold chlorine, wildly waving about his decent limb beneath the surface, churning Rhaegar's pool as he send an almighty wave of water surging into his lab partner. She gave a sound halfway between a grunt and a yelp, and immediately splashed him back. With his hand, he stood little chance in this water fight, and she was both bigger and stronger than him, now he was missing out on practise so regularly. Even so. He was Jaime Lannister. Fun was his middle name.

Maybe an hour later, Brienne reasoned that it was October, it was cold(ish) and she was not an advocate of pneumonia. Jaime pretended to sulk, and had to agree, and so he hauled himself, t-shirt and jeans sodden and plastered to his sponge-esque skin, laid himself down in Rhaegar's grass, regardless of insects – they ruled out here, and it was only fair to let them – on his spread shirt, hoodie as a pillow. The stars were bright, stark against a sable sky, and shining.

He wondered. He wondered why in the seven hells did he just throw the big ugly bitch he'd spent the past few months loathing and ignoring and tormenting, into Rhaegar Targaryen's pool, in the middle of October. Though, as he had the painkillers, he would later claim to be horrified by the effects of copious alcohol, maybe it was, just partly, because he felt sorry for her, and because he felt guilty.

(He also wondered what the fuck he'd just been rambling on about to her, at her, but that made his already aching brain hurt.)

It was fine ridiculing people who didn't work in the social structure of Westeros High when he didn't know a thing about them, and never expected to like them any more than they liked him, never to talk with them properly. But Jaime… he _knew_ Tarth. Sort of. He knew that her father didn't think she socialized enough (which he agreed with). He knew she'd once gotten into a fight with someone she was supposed to be set up with, and broke his ribs and her wrist. He knew there was the smallest, smallest, _smallest fucking chance_ that there was a person inside her heavy casing.

(Or maybe he'd just done the pool thing to try and detract from noticing the fact that even in the night's dimness, Brienne Tarth's eyes were still as startlingly, amazingly blue as they were in the brightest sunlight.) (_What the fuck?_) (He was shaping up to be a right pretentious poetic arsehole.) (No, he was drunk.) (That was all.)

"Lannister?" Brienne tried.

_Jaime, my name is Jaime._ He wanted her to call him by his name.

"What, woman?"

"I don't mean to be ungrateful – I had fun, but why?"

He paused. A thousand horrible jokes came to mind but he pushed them all away. "I wanted to have a good time and I wasn't, in there. You didn't look like you were having a ball either." What? Was he having a good time in there? He thought he had been, cheering on Petyr and Brandon to tear one another to pieces, laughing with Lyanna and her hair and his mental sister's failed scheme, and his brother and his redneck-parented girlfriend. He'd thought he had been. It was only out here, in the shade of the moon, that he realized maybe he hadn't been.

"I don't – I don't know why I came. Renly asked me in a passing comment if I was going to be there and I felt I had to."

"Don't complain about _felt I had to._ Not to me." Jaime Lannister leant back on his elbows amid the grass; the pallid luminescence from the reluctant rind of moon stripped everything of it's colour, painting the world a spectrum of silver and shadow, blue shadow. Far, far behind, a pale light pulsed, from the house, as did the music, heavy, thumping electronic music that throbbed faintly, muffled by night-breeze and distance. And he turned to look at her, with the wind toying at her boyish hair, thick arms wrapped around her legs, chin resting on her knee. In this light, she could almost be pretty. In this light, she could almost be anyone. Only the crickets chimed tribute to his thoughts.

And then he heard breathless laughter, and shouting and footsteps thundering, and his blood chilled to ice in his veins, and the ice weighed him down and woke him up.

Woke him _up_. And he realized what the fuck he'd been doing.

Damn beer. He resolved to become more spectacularly ensnared in the utter ridiculousness that was this party. That ought to help, to blacken away his past hour. _I'm turning into a poncy twat whose lying here in the grass with Brienne fucking freakshow Tarth and am acting toward her like I would a normal person, no, more, like someone on the team, like a friend, well fuck. I've gone mad. I'm never drinking alcohol again. Ever. _

Aghast at himself and his drunk deeds, Jaime stood up, hand laced with pain, head throbbing, and tore off through the trees, swearing under his breath. He didn't look back at where he'd left her, alone. His hand hurt. He wanted to drink the pain away. The last thing he remembered when he awoke in Rhaegar's third-floor bathtub, covered in glitter and instant jello, at midday the next day, with his skull splitting open, was Robert laughing, and the shout of _okay, who put the goat in here?_

**A/N ~** Jaime you're a bastard in denial and I hope you are punished horribly for leaving her there. Oh wait, I'm the author of this – I can punish you… On a side note, anyone else get the parallels between the bath scene at Harrenhal? Huh? Huh?


	10. (Mayor of) The Asshole Association

**The Adventures of Super Jock and Awkward Girl**

**A/N ~ **Thank you once more for all the amazing reviews! Now I'm nearing the end of the final planned chapter, writing-wise, I'm finding myself dreading the thought of _not_ writing modern madness with this lot. So, yes, I am considering a sequel entitled _Super Jock and Awkward Girl Take World_, depicting a certain bunch at college. But let's hold our horses. We'll see.

Also, the goat is called Bart after Bart the Bear, because you have not seen the last of him.

**Coming Up…** Jaime has a hangover and doesn't handle it very well (No really, that's it, that's all that happens). **Find out in The Adventures of Super Jock and Awkward Girl!**

**10. ****(Mayor of) The Asshole Association**

He didn't get home until two thirty in the afternoon, and Tywin was ready to skin him.

_By the godforsaken Seven, can a man get away with nothing these days?_

Jaime Lannister remained quite unsure of why the fuck he was being berated for his late return, slouching, half asleep, before a solid stony father, in the middle of the Lannister kitchen. He'd been one of the _nice_ ones, hadn't he? Who'd stayed to help Rhaegar T get Bartholomew the goat out of his kitchen. Only he and Arthur and Gerold had. It was a nice thing, a good deed. And he was getting ranted at by his father for it. Who exactly put the goat, Bart, into Rhaegar's kitchen was a mystery. Jaime only knew that it wasn't him, and yet he was still expected to get it out.

"You are my son, and you have disgraced the trust I put into you. I've told you so many times, Jaime – in before midnight. Your brother, who is younger than you, managed that. Your twin sister managed that. And yet you are inept. Are you still as bad academically as you were when you were three, and I tried to teach you counting? I expected even you to know how to tell time. And don't blame it on the drink – drinking clouds your head, and nobody forced you to drink. You're confined to school and the house for as long as I deem appropriate."

What? What about practise, what about his _friends_? "But Dad –"

"Not another word, Jaime. Midnight was your curfew and you come traipsing back in here at half past two in the _afternoon_. Actions have consequences and you need to learn that. If you haven't then I've not been doing my job properly. School, house. No more words. And if I send you to do something, you're going to do it."

"That's –"

"No. I've talked to Coach Selmy over the phone and he assured me you'd not be training due to your injury anyway."

That Jaime couldn't argue with. But even so, he'd been turning up to lounge around on the benches and take the piss out of the new subs, as only expected, and to just observe and be with those he admired and tolerated, and soak up the atmosphere of his haunt, and make certain that nobody on the team forgot him. Why did he have to get so roaring drunk? His head felt so achingly heavy that it was like to roll right off. Like it was being smashed to shards by an iron warhammer from the inside. Strings of thoughts were severed in their passage.

"I just –"

"Be quiet. There was a passing comment made about your grades, too, Jaime. They're bad. I can only hope you're not drinking your brain to rot – it might not be the most quick in studious activities, but it's a good brain. You only get one. He mentioned that you ought to gain a sudden, dramatic influx of school credit or it wouldn't be likely you'd pass your exams, get into university at all. You're a Lannister, not some washout. You're a Lannister, you hear me! You're going to start behaving like one. And getting your name back in the school's good books. Starting with that credit."

"If I'm not going to team practise how can I get more –"

"There are plenty of other ways, Jaime. Use your head. You can start with that upcoming Award Scheme camping trip the school's taking a few on. Healthy inter-school competition – and don't say you get that from football, because you went and got your hand broken, didn't you? You're going to go on that camping trip when it comes around. You're going to help out in any way you can. You're going to _knuckle down_ and _study_ or so help you, I will be forced to put in motion harsher consequences that you are not going to like. Do you understand me?"

Jaime, half asleep nodded clumsily and rolled his eyes. That hurt.

"I said, do you understand me?"

"Yes."

"Good. Now go and get some sleep, because I'm not giving you any special treatment in the morning, it's a school night. Go. Now."

Jaime, by some miracle, managed to heave his leaden limbs up the stairs and into his room and onto his bed before he slumped into some kind of bottomless sleep. Bottomless blackness, more like. He dreamed, and he dreamed strangely, jerkily. It took dream-Jaime a while to realize the blackness was part of the dream, not an untroubled sleep. And he was squinting through the blackness. He didn't want to be there, but he knew he had to be. He knew the way out and he couldn't bring himself to go there. _This is your place_.

And he knew that there was so much more to dream, but he had to wake up, because he was being screamed at, someone was screaming, right in his ear. It was the loudest thing he'd ever heard in his entire life, and the very sound of it split his skull with more searing agony that he'd ever felt, more than when his hand broke, even. Jaime groaned, and the sound of it tearing so violently from his throat crippled him, roaring and burning. It took him several bewildered moments to realize the excruciating shrilling was his alarm clock.

He lifted his good arm to shut it off, but in the lifting his arm was the heaviest thing he'd ever lifted, and the effort of letting it drop over the clock send spears of agony stabbing up to his head.

He resolved, not for the first time, to never drink alcohol ever again.

Jaime did the only thing he could do – he let his leaden eyelids crash thunderously down. Then, he heard Tyrion yelling through his door that he was going to be late. He realized he'd clunked down into solid sleep once more and now had under half an hour before school started. _Wow. Thanks, Chataya, what wonderful skills you have in waking me up on time as you agreed to. Bitch._ But he lacked even the strength to go and berate her.

By some miracle, he managed to dress himself with minimal damage to his hand and brain, and squash his necessary books into a pack, and lace up his Chucks – one of his default Timberlands was probably still wrapped in toilet roll and whipped cream, in one of Rhaegar Targaryen's trees. He managed to roll out of the door and into Chataya's car, after Cersei gave him a look of the upmost loathing.

He didn't care. He didn't care about anything except the steady throbbing in his cracking skull. That was all he could focus on right now. Tyrion was laughing. Distantly, Jaime was glad he hadn't gotten his drivers licence yet – if he had, he'd have caused eighty six fatal accidents by eight thirty.

Either way, Jaime was late for school by ten, fifteen minutes. He managed to stumble his way into the harsh fluorescence of the electronically-lit corridor, the sudden sharp vividness stinging his eyes, like soap or grief. He was shambling and shuffling into homeroom, where he endured the rushing, roaring, horrible intensity of hungover life only long enough to be berated by his homeroom teacher, before the bell shrieked and cleaved his skull apart.

What was comforting was that he was definitely not the worst off. Robert Baratheon was in a perpetual slump of moaning, groaning, zombie-like sluggish torture. And quite a speckling of kids were almost equally hungover. Jaime – and them too – allowed the surging crowd of subdued students to carry him along the painful corridor. Gerold H had to actually jab him in the ribs outside the door to their first class, or he would have carried on on a mindless drift across the school. Jaime found his way into a seat, and slept off most of his first period. He wasn't quite sure what class it actually was. He thought maybe it was French, because everyone seemed to be screaming incomprehensibly, but then he remembered he didn't take French, and stopped bothering to try and figure out what he was doing.

Nonetheless, his hangover did ease up as the day relented. By the time lunch was done, he was pretty much awake, although that in no way constituted a good mood. That mood worsened further when someone pointed out to him that Science occupied his next hour. A whole hour of boring nonsense that he was never going to understand, and – holy _shit. _Brienne Tarth. Memories of Rhaegar's party were returning piece by piece. The pool. Brienne. What the fuck had he been saying to her? What did he – why? Why? Jaime collapsed against a wall and decided he hated his life.

Despite his futile attempts at mind-controlling Principal Aerys to shut down the establishment, the bell was screaming again and Mr Hoster Tully was calling his students inside the classroom. The first thing Jaime noticed as he slunk to his allotted seat at the back, by the far window, was Cat Tully standing by her father's desk and talking at him in a pleading tone just low enough that Jaime could not strain to hear what she was saying. By which point, most of the class had filled in their seats, and Tully stood, motioning his daughter to stay.

Brienne was no exception; she'd hung back as much as possible before, a spectacular shade of tomato, sat herself down, distanced and stiff and blaring embarrassment, beside him.

"Due to personal concern that may affect scientific production, Brandon Stark, you will, as of now, be swapping seats and, hence, lab partners with someone. Any volunteers?"

Jaime had to stifle a whoop of laughing jubilance. This was perfect, this was everything – all because of Brandon's brawl with Baelish, and how Cat had probably dumped him (word was that both their Facebook statuses were now _single_.) he would finally be rid of all the horror and guilt that accompanied his science attachment. In a daze of joy, Jaime was just thrusting his hand up in the air to volunteer when he realized it was his bad hand, and it fucking _burned_. So he winced and swapped hands, hungover mood soaring. No more regret. No more hate. No more dread. No more Brienne.

"Thank you, Eddard. Brandon, if you please move your things and sit next to Miss Dustin, we can –"

Jaime nearly leapt from his seat and was glad he didn't when realism set in. Eddard. _Eddard? _ _Eddard?!_ Eddard. Jaime hadn't even known perfect, pure little Ned Stark had skipped a year. A year in science at least. Brandon sighed, grey eyes flashing, as he wove through rows of desks to clump down next to Barbrey Dustin, and Jaime watched in horror as his little brother took his place beside his ex-girlfriend.

Half of Jaime was thankful he didn't have problems such as those involved in the great Stark-Tully-Baelish Pentagon, and the other half wanted to smash something and impale someone.

Oh well. There went his hopes of salvation.

As the teacher went on rambling about some sorts of rock types they were supposed to be identifying, Jaime sunk lower and lower into a more vile mood, until he was resting his head on the desk and glowering, a stone's throw from spitting and swearing. (Or should he say, an _igneous formation's _throw from spitting and swearing.) (What a fun class.) (Why was he actually still taking it?) (He resolved to go immediately to reception after the final bell went and try and switch classes.)

By the time three variants of sedimentary rock had been handed out to each pair, Jaime was in such a foul state that he was past avoiding and dread. He was in full on cruel, self-adoring bastard mode. Each other pair were discussing the rocks they were supposed to be identifying, or otherwise still scrawling down the notes Mr Tully had written up for them to copy (apart from Eddard and Catelyn, who were quietly yet animatedly discussing Petyr Littlefinger Baelish; if Jaime had been feeling any other way, he'd eavesdrop.) while Brienne set about doing the work, and Jaime set about muttering and criticizing the way she did so.

"You know, Lannister, you could help. Try and do something for once in your life." Her tone was measured and restrained and her face was, as always, flushing. He didn't respond, because Hoster Tully was wandering the class as he often did, and he didn't want a further lecture from his father as would naturally follow should he be noted aggressively cursing. "Of course not." Brienne went on tightly. "Rich Jaime, all you've ever had to do was talk about your father and your family and things are done for you."

He noticed she was talking quietly, to herself more than anyone else. But he could still hear. So the world still needed to be punished.

That evening, Jaime stormed through the back door, slamming the worthless polished glass shut in a sable-souled cloud of irate hate. He threw down his bag in the porch viciously, and shoved the cushions aside on the sofa, lunging for the remote and stabbing at the change-channel buttons furiously. Tyrion, naturally, found this very amusing.

"Bad day, big brother?"

"What gave me away?" Jaime spat, and then hated himself for it. He wasn't sheer, undiluted fury. That was Cersei. He was supposed to be the calmly cruel one, he was meant to be calculating and measured, he was supposed to have enough sense to know that proper cold anger made you stupid, and stupid never earned any redemption or revenge. He paused. "Idiot teaching schedules meant I couldn't switch classes. I'm stuck with Science and Brienne Tarth all year."

"You weren't so mad about this even when your dreadful plight was first announced. What changed?" Tyrion seemed far too smug for Jaime's liking.

Jaime closed his eyes a moment. His ears still rung and his head still ached. "She was at Rhaegar's party the other night. After you left, maybe. Or were off with your precious _Tysha_."

"Is that meant to be insulting, Jaime? Tysha is precious to me. And I still don't see how one innocent girl's appearance at a party is anything to dampen anyone's mood about. The only times that's understandable is after a lovers spat, such as –" Jaime's fist tightened on a nearby cushion. Tyrion clearly sensed his brother's furious tensing and smirked, holding up open palms as a peace treaty. " – I only meant to reference Catelyn Tully and Brandon Stark. Take no offense. Nothing to do with you and Brienne Tarth."

"Tyrion, stop talking now, for the sake of your life."

"Although they do say it's a skinny little line between love and hate."

"_Paper_ thin ice."

"Don't be like that. I only meant to –"

"Don't think I won't tear you apart just because you're my beloved brother and the one family member I half respect."

"Okay, okay, you hate Brienne Tarth, what does this have to do with me?"

"We weren't talking about you."

"Weren't we? Everyone talks about me. I'm the only one with a thimbleful of sense around here."

"Shut _up_."

"Fine. Back to your torturous troubles."

Jaime hesitated, thought it through, then, after thinking physically pained him due to his killing hangover, resolved to inform his baby brother of only a fraction of the party's events. Perhaps slice away at the more regretful parts that made him want to punch himself (and everything else). Not that he was in the wrong in any way. Just because he could. "After you and Peanut Girl went off into Rhaegar's guest room, I ran into a certain resentful science partner on the stairs. She seemed to be rather upset that her little friend liked men and not her – I still don't get it, she's manly enough – and I, being the astonishing human being that I am, showed her Rhaegar's swimming pool. We had a little splash fight. I was purely humouring her, though, poor hopeless fool, and then I went back in to the party and somehow I get the feeling this has given her cause for even more embarrassment than her existence usually calls for."

Tyrion studied Jaime for a while after her finished speaking, mismatched eyes sharp and sparkling. "Alright. Makes little sense. Now tell me the unedited version and I may be able to figure some things out. You know what a good people person I am."

Jaime swore violently. "Screw you, Tyrion."

"No, Tysha's not here right now. Jaime. I'm your brother, after all, though I'm clearly the more handsome one, you know I'll help in any way that I can. As long as it doesn't involve physical confrontation. Or recognition. Just tell me what actually happened. Go on."

"Fine, little bastard." Jaime muttered, shifting on the sofa, kicking his shoes off with his opposing feet – a particularly well-honed skill. "We were in the pool. We had a splash fight. We talked. Civilly. Sort of. I think. I was very, very, very drunk and Brienne agreed to save me if I drowned myself. I said some… holy crap, what did I say? Something about self-adoring good people having anger with football…? Or bastards being bastards to avoid bastards? Whatever, the charming brute called me a coward, and then we laughed and had a bit more of a splash fight. We got out on her suggestion of avoiding pneumonia. We dried off. I –" Jaime frowned. All his rainbow-hazed recollection provided was that he was in the pool with Brienne, and then he was back in the house when all the lightweights went home, and the real fun began, with the glitter and foam and Bart Goat. How did the two combine, how – oh, right. "I ran. I didn't just leave her there, I – I ran off. No warning, no explanation, I just ran off, and I left Brienne there."

_Oh gods, I'm the mayor of the asshole association. _

He'd apologise, he told himself. He'd apologise on Facebook, or tomorrow, for being the biggest dick the world had ever seen. And oh, shit, his behaviour today – that was so much _worse now_, he'd ran, oh gods. (But then again, he always told himself the same thing regarding everyone else, when he couldn't sleep at night, and never followed through.)

Tyrion had once more considered all that Jaime had said, with a slightly more serious lightness to his look and to his demeanour than his previous uninvested amusement. After a long time, he finally spoke, with all sincerity, "You know, Jaime," He said, "You used to call her Tarth."


	11. This Friendship Thing Escalated Quickly

**The Adventures of Super Jock and Awkward Girl**

**A/N ~ **_The Dream of Wonders has been changed to suit the fic. Just to let you know. It focuses more on the idea of Jaime having to sort out his own life, and make his own decisions without his image in mind, and the more prominent part is centred around the Westeros High Dragons. Also, the guns have a metaphorical meaning – cookies to everyone who guesses! _And to those who are asking _is this over_ – don't be silly. I've got **_THIRTY _**planned chapters, including the epilogue. I just have trouble getting on the internet regularly.

**Disclaimer ~ **Despite all my scheming, A Song of Ice and Fire still belongs to that fat old sot who is indeed king and god of everything.

**1. **** Well, This Friendship Thing Escalated Rather Quickly**

Jaime Lannister did not sleep untroubled that night, no – after so many late nights, after the party and his insane hangover, he slept _deeply_, as expected, yes, but smoothly? Not a chance. Naturally. He crashed into bed after feeling out of place and agitated all evening – simultaneously irritated and angry and calm and sleepy, and feeling like he wanted to do something, but wanted to _want _to do something, which he did not. Homework had been shoved aside, guilt repressed, and some shit put on the telly, until he sunk down, chin on his chest, hand throbbing, bleary-eyed and bored, and Tyrion told him it was nearing midnight and he should probably get some sleep. Someone else would have told him he ought to eat before he rested, but he was more tired than hungry. So he'd trudged upstairs and didn't even make it to the bed; though when he crashed down on top of a stack of study books he'd never looked at before, he didn't fall peacefully, as he'd hoped.

He should have gotten decent sleep, if there had been any damn gods or _caring_ fates. But all his dreams these days were so vivid.

He stood alone, alone and completely vulnerable, in darkness, such darkness, but even in the faintest of lights he recognized his home – he was still in the Lannister house. Strange. But what was stranger still was that he appeared to be standing in the basement; the old cellar that nobody went down into anymore. It took him a few moments to mark what was different, different but felt so right – his hand was alive and healed, bones attached and fixed in place. He raised his arm, flexed his wrist, as he hadn't done in – how long? A month, more? They said it was meant to be healed by now, they _said_ it. He could feel the strength in it, in his fingers, back again so late, feel the blood flowing silkily through his hand, not disjointed and struggling.

Around him stood a dozen dark figures, obscured by the stacked shadows and the black hoodies pulled up over their faces, like gangsters in old movies. He felt like he should have been scared of them for that, but he felt like nothing could hurt him so long as his hand worked, too. Then he realized – in their hands were guns.

"Who are you?" Jaime demanded. "What are you doing in my house? I'll call the police if you don't leave here _right now_."

But they didn't care to answer. They just poked him on with their pistols, and he had no choice but to descend. Descend? In his dream there was a passageway, like the one Tywin had blocked up years ago, when he was just a little kid, but it twisted down, and he had to follow it, down into a narrow staircase, dark and dismal. _It's like some horror film. The idiot family always goes down. I have to go up, up back to my bedroom, not down here, why am I coming down here? _Down here was where the danger lurked. Something terrible was down here, he knew with the certainty of a messed-up nightmare. It was like whatever horror-film villain was down there wanted him, but when he tried to stop, the guns just prodded him on.

The steps ended abruptly on a darkness far greater than the one in the basement he'd come from. He could feel the vast space in front of him, below, some huge black abyss, even in the echoey pitch. He jerked to a stop, balancing on the rim of nothingness. But still the gunpoint jabbed him forth. He fell, and he fell quickly – he was aware of shouting out, before his fall came to a sudden stop. A shorter drop than he'd anticipated. He was on his knees, in shallow, cold water. "Where am I?" He called, and a voice answered, echoing, like a thousand voices more than one; _Your place_.

And then it dawned on him that over all the other voices he could hear his dad. And there he was, so suddenly, and Jaime was only vaguely aware he was dreaming, it seemed so real. Tywin was standing next to Cersei, and next to Cersei more shadowy shapes he thought he knew. If this was still so far beneath the house, he felt almost as if Tyrion should be here, but then he was glad that he wasn't. This was not where Tyrion belonged. His father looked so stern and cold – more so than he usually did, like all of his chilliness was heightened down here, that he had to turn to his twin to appeal. "Cersei, where are we? Why's Dad taken us here?"

"Us, Jai'?" Cersei seemed detached. More so than usual – why, why, why? They fought, as all did, but she was his _twin_, his _family_, family _loved_ each other. She was holding a torch, a powerful wind-up flashlight one, like the professional ones, and the only light in the cavern-esque space. "This is your place, your darkness." She looked sad and remote and pleased all at the same time, before his sister turned to leave him in this slasher-movie set, in the dark. "Sometimes, Jaime, you have to face things on your own."

"Where are you going? Stay, you have to stay, Cers, you can't leave me alone here!" But they were already leaving, their father too. "No, guys, don't, please! _Don't abandon me in the dark!"_

Jaime circled, anxious, feeling the icy water flow into his shoes, sodden socks. He'd watched his fair share of creepy films; he knew to be wary of the water, however shallow – there could be creatures in there, carnivores, parasites. And yet he felt something brushing up against his foot, and he knew he had to find it. He didn't want to, like he didn't want to go down further from the basement, but he had to, so he fished around for it. His stomach clenched when he realized it was a gun he was holding, a Bond pistol. He'd never held a gun before, not outside the worlds of Xbox and PlayStation. It scared him, the power he was holding so easily. And then, so dull and soft at first, came a light, faint, tentative – almost like it was afraid to shine, just in front of him, above the gun in his tightly clenched hands. It was a colourless sort of light, not like the electronic white-gold of Cersei's flashlight.

A splash from behind alerted him suddenly, and he whirled to see what it was, gun trembling. It was like he was in a video game, or a real war – but the dim illuminations exposed only Brienne Tarth. Even in the cover of nightless night, he could still just about make out the blue of her eyes, turned on him, on his gun. It was so dim down here that he could hardly see her, even though they stood so close. His thoughts from the pool returned unbidden; _in this light she could almost be pretty. In this light she could almost be anybody._ "A pistol." It wasn't a question. She held her hand out and there it was, with another ball of light, silver and blue; the black receded a tad.

"The light will live as long as you, Jaime," He heard a voice call, a familiar voice that he could barely place now, but knew he knew. Shifting. Was it Cersei? Now Rhaegar? Now Robert? "When it dies, so must you, Jaime Lannister,"

"Hello?" He shouted. "Who are you, where are you? Stay! Stay with me, _stay!" _The voice didn't reply, but he could just about make out footsteps, footsteps. Going away, away from him. Brienne shifted the pistol slightly in her grip - it looked hauntingly easy there – and the light shifted too, shimmering, and it grew brighter, just a little, than his. Beneath her feet, Jaime could see the disfigured reflection of the bulbless light in the flat, dark water. Dream-Brienne was as tall as waking-Brienne, but it seemed this one was more of a girl.

"Where are we?" Brienne asked warily, fierce in the faint blue light, moving slow, gun clutched tight; step, turn, listen. Each step made a muffled splashing. "Do you know what's down here? An animal, or something? What's here, Jaime?"

_Doom._

"I don't like it here. It doesn't feel right."

"I'm not too fond of it myself, you know." At the end of the day, this was his dream. Nightmare. Dream. His twisted subconscious; his darkness. Though their little lights together made a ring of pallid, blue luminescence, the darkness, his darkness lounged all around them, unending. His feet were so wet, socks clinging. He looked to her.

"We could go back the way your dad came. We could try to climb the walls. If I gave you a boost, we could make it, you'd have no trouble reaching that tunnel mouth thing, where the stairs end." Jaime considered. _She's right. I could follow Dad, and Cersei._ He felt a warm hand on his shoulder, light. "Listen," Brienne said, and he was trembling in the cold and at the sudden touch. "Someone's coming." _Tywin_.

Jaime turned around, frowning through the black, until he saw it too, murky shapes, getting closer and closer. _Tywin_. He could only hope it was his family; somehow, by nightmare standards, he was sure he'd not be so lucky. It was strange; he could see whoever it was, whatever it was, emerging, walking so slowly, but they didn't make any noise. No splashy water, no rustle of clothes or noticeable, loud breathing. Maybe it was just the dream, the nightmare, but he felt a weird kind of dread from them, and gained new respect for the ghost stories, and the idiots in them. Dread, but not fear. Somehow he knew to keep those two separate. Somehow, he knew he didn't have to be afraid. Dread was different. Brienne touched his arm softly. "There are more."

There were.

And now he saw, he saw them. They were his friends, his peers, his teammates, his brothers. He'd known most of them since preschool, when he was a tiny little shit with a positive golden afro of curls, and a temper worse than his twin's was now. Gerold Hightower, and Arthur Dayne, steady and quiet as they never were in waking hours, casting shadows that were darker and heavier and larger than they were. Side by side and accusing. Handsome and strong and almost… mourning. Robert Baratheon, with his wild black hair, more upset than raucous, something far more different than he knew. And leading, Rhaegar Targaryen. Around were other various members of the Westeros High Dragons. "Hi? Hello? _Hello_? Hello! Rhaegar! Rhae_gar…?_ What's going on, how do we get out of here?"

If they heard him, his teammates, his _brothers_ ignored him.

"You were so happy when you joined us, Jaime," Gerold said, so softly. "So untroubled."

"Like us," Robert finished.

"Like us."

"_Like us_."

They all echoed it, the two words he puzzled so over. What did that even mean? What did he do? But they were all coming closer now, and so menacingly, while he and Brienne stood back to back against the darkness, as they closed in.

Jaime woke up to the shriek of his alarm clock.

Five minutes to seven.

Confused as to why he was lying sprawled across stacks of assigned study books halfway across his bedroom, Jaime sat up, head fuzzy from sleep, hand immediately going to his aching face. A hardback science guide had left it's indent in his cheek. Great. He yawned and found to his surprise that he felt more awake that he had done in a good long while. And then it came back to him, in all it's startling clarity, the dream. _Wow. I really need to stay off the booze._

found his way quickly downstairs, where Chataya was frying eggs and bacon in a hissing pan. Tyrion sat ay the kitchen table – their father already at work, they avoided the dining room once more – already stuffing his little face with that fish he liked. Jaime went to the cupboard and drew out a plate, settling down beside his brother, where Chataya slid an egg and a few rashers onto his plate. He grappled for the ketchup, in almost good spirits.

And then Cersei came downstairs, looking positively venomous.

Jaime promptly shovelled his breakfast into his mouth, much to the amusement of his younger brother, and hastened up the stairs. Shower, clothes, bag, shoes. Within the half hour, he was out the door. The sudden light blinded him momentarily, before he adjusted. Though autumn was trailing surely into winter, he savoured the warmth on his skin – it'd be warm today. Perhaps for the last time in a few months. He fumbled in his bag for his earphones, checking the time on his phone. Early. He'd take the long way around.

Jaime stared at the grains of the pavement as he walked, almost in time with the music, golden hair drying quickly. He passed a gaggle of girls he briefly knew, from Sunspear Street, who waved wildly and then fell about, giggling amongst themselves as he nodded acknowledgement to their existence. _Some people are such idiots_. That wasn't going to stop him revelling in it, though. He wasn't Rhaegar.

He thought about taking the time to consider what his mental dream meant. Or would have done, if he were the sort of person who believed dreams meant things. (Probably just that alcohol didn't agree with him and he should never watch Saw ever again.) In fact, he was just putting his subconscious from his mind and turning his thoughts instead to how well he was managing the broken hand lately, and how he was going to enjoy watching the awkwardness between Baelish and Stark today, when he turned the corner onto Evenfall Lane and really wished he'd taken his usual, shorter route.

_Oh, for Seven's sake, just when I was having a good moment, just when!_ Someone up there really did have it in for him.

Brienne Tarth was hovering in the doorway, shouting up the stairs to someone, presumably a parent. _The poor cow hasn't noticed me yet. I can still turn around. Go back the other way. Carefully_… Jaime turned his back immediately at the sounds of a door closing and a lock clicking, before a glance at his phone confirmed his unthought-of dread. If he went back now to favour his default path, through the park, he'd be extraordinarily late. And though he was Jaime fucking Lannister, who didn't care _at all_, his fathers words about his grades and his exams and college kept popping back into his head.

Maybe if he kept his earphones in she wouldn't notice him. _No, that'd never work, I'm far too attractive._ Oh gods. Oh gods. Why. Jaime turned back to find Brienne had already started walking, head down. Close. If he paced himself he could stay behind her all the way there. Did he have science today? He tried to think, but the thoughts wouldn't come when he called. Damn them. His dream was coming back to him, the pistols and the ocean blue light, silvery in the darkness. _Like us_.

Oh, to hell with it. He'd have to face up at some point. Why was life so hard, anyway?

He pulled out an earphone and jogged over. "Brienne!" _You used to call her Tarth._ He inwardly cursed at himself, and remembered to focus more on what he called her. Couldn't be so informal. She might get the idea he didn't loathe the very sight of her. She turned, frowning and didn't say anything when she saw him. Once more he failed to read her expression. Stupid bitch. She just blinked at him.

"Yeah?"

He caught up with her and fell into step beside her, glancing around to make certain there was nobody around he knew, nobody he was friends with. There wasn't. There wouldn't be. They all took the same route he usually did. She was half a head taller than him. Bollocks. He had always been considered tall. "Well hello to you too."

She stared at him with – was that annoyance, he detected? "What do you want, Jaime?"

"Well I _want _my hand to work properly, but that's not happening for a long time, apparently. Sad, isn't it? What do you want?" Jaime stared from Brienne, who was looking firmly in front of her, to the sunlight beating down on the concrete ahead of his feet.

"I want you to leave me alone, Lannister."

Well.

"Strange, I don't think any girl's ever said that to me before. Then again, I don't think any _human_'s ever said that to me before."

Brienne stopped abruptly in the sunlit street, turning to face him, hefting her backpack, slung over one shoulder. "Please go away."

"I have as much right to walk to school along this road as you do."

"Jaime, shut up and leave me alone."

"You're like a parrot, you know, a really, really, really ugly, socially awkward parrot."

"What are you talking about?"

"You just say the same thing, over and over. Is that intentional or…?"

For once, Brienne actually fixed those enormous azure eyes on him, and in truth she just looked tired of him. But then again, apparently his judgement was all over the place these days. Freaking hormones. "Jaime, I don't know what you're trying to achieve but can you do it somewhere else? I'm meant to be meeting my friends at the next block and you're not one of them. If you're planning some joke, try it on someone else."

_I'm not planning any joke, woman, for the love of god! _What was wrong with her? What was _wrong_ with the bitch, why couldn't she just _get_ it into that thick skull of hers that he wasn't setting her up for anything! Honestly, maybe he should just go back to Classic Jaime and stop trying to be nice at all. Consciences were too heavy for him to deal with and nobody seemed to appreciate his anyway. He could've said all that to her. He would've. But no, he was him, stupid, stupid him, and had to go and act all mock-shocked. "Wait… You have _friends_?"

She opened her mouth to say something and stopped herself. "You're impossible." J

Jaime stood still there beneath the blue sky, as Brienne just turned and strode off in the direction of the school. _Oh, for crying out loud. _Jaime sighed and hurried after her, grabbing her hoodie sleeve as he caught up. "No, seriously, wait, Brienne." _Brienne again, damn it, Tarth, Tarth. _"I want to call a truce. In the name of science." He was expecting the usual response to all the pure gold that came from his mouth; smiles and nods and acceptance. She just scowled.

"Do you honestly think I'm going to believe that?" She muttered, kicking at a fence with an ancient, scuffed Converse. "Nobody who's not one of you believes anything you say." That was quieter, but he could still hear. She probably hadn't meant that to hurt, but somehow that last sentence cut through to him, quite clearly.

"Fine, Brienne. I just wanted to say _I'm sorry_."

"For what?" She blinked again. She wasn't doing it on purpose, not by any means, but she might as well have been. He decided he hated the colour blue. Particularly really, really pretty, bright blue.

"I don't know, woman, give me something to work with! For being a dick. For being nice and then ignoring you, for being nice and then being pissy to you. I'm kind of an ass, and I just wanted to say _I'm sorry_, for once in my life. Gods. Does _sorry_ mean something unacceptable these days? Honestly."

She considered, and then spoke, after a long while. "At least you openly admit it, most asses try and deny it."

"See, I'm not denying anything." Stupid fucking idiot. He hated her. Why was he doing this? Oh, Gods, he was going to regret this later… He was inwardly praying that she wouldn't ever mention this to anyone ever. They walked on a while, in complete and utter awkward silence. He felt like he should say something. Then he'd warn her that if she ever mentioned this to anyone ever he would indeed tear her limb from limb. "So… How's life?" She didn't say anything. Cow. "Who're you meeting? Renly?" _I don't think him and his boyfriend like you tagging around after him. _He restrained himself from adding that, but barely. The subject just sparked so many pure platinum jibes.

"Hyle. Hunt. And Pod Payne."

"Great." Podrick Payne was the little kid who Tyrion hung around with sometimes. He knew him by sight, and not well at that. He was pretty certain he had a stutter. _Well, at least she has friends, even if they are her standard. _"Seemed like a fairly interesting shouting match you were having with your mum or whatever back there."

"Jaime, stop trying to make small talk."

"Ooh, mother issues?" _Why are you being such a jerk again, Jaime? _This was a touchy subject for him anyway.

"It was my dad, if you must know. He was upstairs." Brienne hesitated, seeming to mull something over for a while. "My mum's dead."

Oh. _Oh_. That explained a lot. That cited a lot. He wondered unbidden how old she'd been. He could barely remember Joanna Lannister by this point. And the fleeting memories he did have of her were fading with every passing day. No, Jaime, you fucking idiot, don't think about this right now. "Yeah. So's mine."

"Oh."

"Yeah,"

"I'm not talking about this to you, Jaime."

"You will. One day, you will." He didn't quite know why he said that. Except he did. He so did. There was just nobody else to relate to. It wasn't like he could spill his soul to Tywin, or his twin. Not anymore.

"I don't think so. Be quiet."

"Oh, come on, Brienne. Why wouldn't anyone want to talk to me? I'm smart, I'm sexy, I mean _look at me_." He winced after that came out. That was shitty, even for him. But then again, anything to get off the dead mother subject. Brienne just stared at him, and not in the way females of the species usually stared at him. (Assuming she was female.) (Then again, assuming they were of the same species.)

"I'm not your friend." Just the tone of her voice told him that she was still guarded, still suspicious he might have some public humiliation planned for her. It was so exasperating. Just because you enjoyed a bit of douchebaggery doesn't mean you can't ever be truthful.

"Why not?" Jaime feigned being hurt.

"Because I don't like you. And you don't like me."

"I thought what we had was special."

"Shut up."

"We're almost at the school, where are your _friends_?" He air quoted the _friends_ and felt immediately guilty for it. She made no reply. "You just made them up to get rid of me, didn't you?"

"Fine," Brienne sighed irritably. "Truce. For the sake of our grades."

Jaime grinned as they approached the gates. "Well. This friendship thing escalated quickly."

**A/N ~ **Remember; I've planned for thirty chapters including epilogue. Just got a spastic internet.


	12. In (And Out Of) Sobrerity

**The Adventures of Super Jock and Awkward Girl**

**A/N ~ **My boyfriend who I have recently introduced to ASOIAF has just read the bear pit scene – which I intend to incorporate into this, though much later – and has just texted me to say we now share an OTP. J/B fandom, we have gained a supporter.

**Coming Up… **Jaime meets a certain caravan child in soberity, soberity becomes a word, Jaime keeps a twin's secret, blackmail happens, Jaime's conscience hurts him, and it rains rather heavily on Jaime's high. **Find out in The Adventures of Super Jock and Awkward Girl!**

**1. ****In (And Out Of) Sobrerity**

The languid rays of sunny warmth soon shrunk away beneath clouds, which then proceeded to wash away the first decent weather in ages.

Jaime slammed the door in mildly damper spirits; he'd been held behind again to clear away beakers and lenses and crap for Mr. Tully's science class. Naturally, he'd been oh so nonchalantly chosen for the job because of a few choice snide comments he'd slipped in earlier in the lesson. _Oh, no, it's not a detention, Mr Lannister_. Well it might as fucking well have been. Before that, of course, science had actually been quite bearable, surprisingly enough. His truce with the she-hulk herself was holding up, and they'd actually got through the lesson in sort-of harmony.

Silence greeted him in the living room. "Hello?" Jaime yelled, kicking his bag away into the shelf in the porch and throwing himself down on the couch to unlace his boots. "Hello?"

"Dad's working late. Come in my room and I'll personally rip your throat out."

Cersei Lannister's voice drifted down from the hallway, from above, and Jaime wondered where on earth she'd gotten the notion anyone ever wanted to go in her room. It was the first sentence that he primarily picked up on, however. Tywin Lannister seemed to be forever working late these days. He heard snatches of voices, Tyrion's and one he faintly recognized, and the thunder of feet on the staircase. "Hel_lo_ big brother!" Jaime watched as Tyrion came grinning into view with a girl on his arm.

"…Hi," Jaime greeted, frowning. Memories of the party. Peanut shells. "Tyrion. And… Tysha, is it?"

"Yeah, Tysha, hi," The girl confirmed, and gave Tyrion a look that made the two of them snigger. Jaime felt as though he were imposing on two people eternally linked with all these inside jokes that he didn't get. Then again, perhaps he was. It was quite annoying. Was this how people felt around him and the rest of the Westeros Dragons team? Huh. This was what other people felt like. How did they stand it? "It's really good to meet you in, like, sobrerity."

"In what?"

"Sobrerity, like, not drunk. Sober."

"That's not a word, Tysha."

"It is now," Tyrion smiled.

Oh dear lord.

"Well, Chataya's got the evening off, and Senelle – the new one – and Dorcas aren't scheduled to come around at all this week so I was going to get an Indian."

"Make it Chinese and we'll talk." Jaime replied, drifting over to sift through leaflets on the coffee table. One for the Sesh Wun Palace stood out and he tossed it absently toward his little brother and his caravan-park girlfriend. His default orders were circled in scarlet biro, Cersei's in green. Cersei. "Oi, _Cersei!_" Jaime yelled, kicking the door to the staircase landing open with his toe. "_Cersei!"_

"_Yeah?_"

"_We're ordering Chinese food!"_

_"What a marvellous life you have!"_

_"Shut up, do you want some or not?"_

_"Yeah!"_

_"Okay!"_

He let the door swing shut and smiled at Tyrion and an unfazed Tysha. Jaime was willing to bet she lived with about a thousand siblings or cousins or both. (Then again, Cersei Lannister alone was the equivalent of putting up with about a thousand siblings or cousins or both.) He continued flipping through the splay – until something caught his eye. A couple of inky words – _the twins?_ Jaime slid it from the pile, dropping the rest. _Kings Landing College_. He felt a frown furrow his eyebrows. The enormous sprawl of redbrick buildings glossily photographed on the cover screamed prestigious. "Tyrion?" Jaime called, not looking up from the leaflet, turning it in his hands to scan through the writing on the back.

"Yeah?" Tyrion mouthed, holding the phone to his chest, where he'd been making their order.

"Did you know Dad's arranging to try and get me and Cers into Kings Landing?"

"No," Tyrion mouthed, with a puzzled glance of _so what_, hastening to get back to rattling off their rather extensive Chinese delivery demands. Kings Landing. Kings Landing College. KLC. Well fuck. No wonder Tywin had blown a gasket about Jaime's struggling grades and wild party night – if he was already considering a correspondence with a uni like Kings Landing. The place was a fucking palace. Famous. Esteemed. Elite. The best grades, the best sports programmes – hell, they offered coursework in _everything_. Well, naturally. Of course Tywin would want to send him there when he finished the school. Only the best for the Lannisters. Oh, shit. Oh Gods.

Did he want to go there? Did he? Jaime considered. Yeah. Yeah, he did, he fucking did. Their football programme was astonishing. Well, by the Seven. Kings Landing College. If he wanted to get in, if he really did, it was time to grow up and knuckle down. Oh gods. He knew they offered sports scholarships, and he knew that if he put in the time he could snatch one up, easy. But his hand was broken. And it didn't seem like it'd ever be fixed, not in time for him to claim one.

Jaime flopped back down onto the sofa and frowned into space.

"Jaime? What's this about Kings Landing? Your eyes've gone the size of eggs." Tyrion threw himself down next to him and peered across the coffee table, taking up the leaflet and scanning it quickly. Jaime wondered perhaps if Tyrion was thinking about whether he'd be expected to go there when it came to his graduation. "Well. Father dearest does want the best for his golden twins."

"Tyrion!" Jaime snapped. "How the fuck does he expect me to do this without my hand, I'm useless!"

"Calm down, brother, it's going to be fine. You'll get in. He's rich and stubborn, he'll find a loophole. He wants you to do well." He was glad of his brother's words. They did little to soothe him, but he could cling to them at night when the doubts came on stronger. Tysha nodded awkwardly, leaning against the wall. Ugh. Maybe he was being stupid. Tywin would find a way, if anyone could, the man was pure steel. He'd find a way. And then Jaime would be playing for Kings Landing College, and Cersei would be chewing up and spitting out the male population of Kings Landing College, and life would be _good_. KLC was far, though – way further south. He'd loose all his teammates except a few. He knew Rhaegar would be attending, as befitted the second-wealthiest family in the area, and perhaps Rob Baratheon, maybe the Starks had said something about it once. But aside from that, it'd be a clean slate. He'd need to get property off-campus… Oh Seven – did he even know what he wanted his major to be?

Well. Kings Landing College then.

"Tysha, would you like to eat in the dining room, the kitchen, or in here?" Tyrion asked across Jaime, and Jaime thought it best to let him change the subject, to not get to caught up in the currents of Kings Landing, since it was only a pending idea after all.

"You have an actual proper dining room that you actually use?" Tysha seemed part teasing and part awed and part perplexed, one eyebrow cocked slightly. Oh good gods. The suppressed, unconditionally cruel voice in Jaime's head couldn't wait for their father to meet this girl.

"Yeah," Tyrion confirmed. "But we choose to eat at the kitchen table when we're alone, it's easier and quite frankly it makes us feel less like over-indulged spoilt little rich kids."

"Speak for yourself, I happen to enjoy being an over-indulged, spoilt little rich kid." Jaime made himself smile and grab for the television remotes.

"Okay, great… Why don't we just stay here for the time being… My spoilt little rich kid," Tysha giggled and thumped down next to Tyrion. Ugh. The very notion made him sick. He wanted Tyrion to be happy with a girl, yes, and to be honest it was way past time. And yet they didn't cease to remind him he was still all alone. (Did every girl in Westeros High want to have his children? Quite possibly. Did he want any of them to? Quite possibly _not_. It wasn't that he couldn't have any chick of his choosing. It was just that lately he was starting to hate them all.)

Whilst Jaime flipped through channels one of the Lannisters' many, many enormous flatscreens, Tyrion went to get the door when it shrilled, setting the plastic bag full of cartons on the coffee table. He offered to get plates, but that went ultimately ignored, and he ended up half balancing the fucking _hot_ boxes on his lap, whilst fruitlessly attempting to find something half-decent in the hundreds and hundreds of channels. Nada.

He shouted up to Cersei, who materialized to snatch up her portions for about two seconds before disappearing back up into her room. Jaime told Tysha to think nothing of it and he and Tyrion spent quite a long, amusing conversation discussing the wonder that was their sister. They settled on Man Vs Food. Jaime wasn't sure why. He'd shovelled his sweet and sour pork into his mouth with the standard splintery chopsticks that came with the order for lack of motive to get up and venture all the way into the kitchen for a fork. Rice proved progressively harder, so he relented, and in his relenting decided it wouldn't be right if he kept the possibility of Kings Landing from his twin. (And he needed an excuse to flee from his brother and his girlfriends' canoodling.)

"Where's the KL leaflet? I'm going to go alert Cers." Jaime hovered in the doorway, holding out his hand for the leaflet, which Tyrion, muttering something about the dragon twin, shuffled through empty Chinese cartons stained with sauce for produce. Jaime stared down at it and tried to imagine going there as he trudged up the staircase onto the landing.

He took a deep breath before entering his twin sisters' room. She was very touchy about her privacy. But he was hardly going to knock, he was _him._ He didn't knock. Not knocking had paid off quite well over the years. (And it had failed him horrendously once or twice, but he didn't talk about that.)

The door swung shut behind him. Cersei's bedroom was empty. The remains of her Chinese were spilling from the bin in the corner.

He considered waiting for her return, but that was before the crumpled paper bag shoved haphazardly beside her bed caught his attention. It had torn clean down the middle, and from that gaping seam its contents were quite clearly lolling forth. Jaime felt himself frown. Oh gods. Oh shit. What? What the fuck?

The first thing that had entered his mind just replayed over and over and over, an endless movie reel, flashing in the forefront of Jaime's mind. _What the fuck is Cersei doing with a bag full of liquor? _Fazed, he knelt beside his sister's enormous bed and rifled through the bag's contents. Wine. Liquor. _Vodka_. Mostly wine. All sorts of it, he observed, picking up one half-empty bottle of red. And he was willing to bet that there was a stash of empty bottles somewhere. What, what, what. He stumbled as he zeroed immediately in on the drawers beneath her bed. She always stopped anyone going in there by saying she kept 'personal stuff' there. He yanked one open. A multitude of empty glass bottles, all shapes and sizes. Oh gods. Oh, Cersei.

He heard the toilet flush across the landing and his blood chilled to ice in his veins, heavy ice that froze him to the spot. Momentarily. Then he was furious. Fucking furious. He wasn't sure why. It was just his go-to response. The Kings Landing leaflet lay discarded and forgotten on her plush carpet.

The door swung open.

It took Cersei approximately three seconds to survey the situation and put two and two together. "Jaime you motherfucking rat bastard, you have no idea what you've just put yourself in for," Jaime barely heard her. "No idea! You had _no_ right to burst into my room unannounced, like you're the king of the fucking world, you stupid golden fool, I'm going to kill you, _I'm going to kill you_!"

"Cersei, what is this? What're you doing?" Jaime frowned at her. When did the twin sister he loved so much start to hide so much from him? Did this happen to all teenagers? He barely knew her anymore.

"I am _drinking_, Jaime." Cersei sat herself down on her bed and the flint glare she fixed him with would have made any lesser man wither and die. "It's what you do when everything's a mess except you. And I swear to all the seven, if you ever tell anyone I'm going to kill you."

"Cersei, you know I can't let you do this. This is mental, fucked-up, and probably illegal. How are you getting all this anyway?"

Cersei smiled knowingly and Jaime wondered if she was drunk right now. When she snatched the bottle he still held from him and drank deeply, he didn't have to wonder any more. "I know people."

"Cersei."

"Taena knows a man who can get hold of fake IDs."

"Holy shit, Cersei, even for you this is fucked. What did you ever hope to achieve from this? How are you planning on sneaking all the bottles out without Dad finding out? Or Chataya or me or anyone?"

"Well, I've been doing it for months, you see, after a while it all just slots together."

"_Months_! You're messed up, Cersei, this stops now. I'm Jamie fucking Lannister, and I've been living on the edge since I took my first breath. You've just been crashing over it since then, haven't you, again and again? I'm not supposed to give a shit, but apparently this idiot who's taking over my brain does. He's going to tell Dad, whether you like it or not." What the fuck? What the fuck did he just say? He was _Jaime Lannister_! And here he was coming over all Eddard freaking Stark and threatening to _tell daddy _on his stupid bitch of a sister. Well, fuck me. Ned was going to have to relinquish the goody two shoes slot. (No, no, this would just be a minor necessary setback in a world of badassery.)

"You're not going to do that," His twin murmured, softly, smugly, staring into her wine bottle.

"Oh, _am I not_? I'm all for the wild youth and partying and shit but this is actually serious, Cersei. You know I don't do serious."

"You're not going to do that," Cersei repeated. Her green eyes flickered up to her twins. "Because if you do, I'm going to reduce your life to a living hell."

"Really? How?"

He watched with a pricking sliver of irritating anxiety that he slaughtered quickly as she relished in whichever scheme of silence she'd cooked up. She looked far to pleased for Jaime's liking. "Rhaegar Targaryen's Halloween party. My delicious plan to ruin that bitch Lyanna Stark for good had backfired and I was off stalking the shadows to try and gather myself up. You remember Rhaegar Targaryen's Halloween party, don't you? I saw a young couple pass me, and I thought to myself – _who on earth would be away from the main events_?"

This was straying into dangerous territory. "Cersei." Jaime's tone was growing warning. "What are you getting at?"

"I saw you making out with that thing _Brienne Tarth_ in the pool."

"You quite obviously didn't, we weren't doing _anything_ like that –"

"No, but I can always just say you were, when I let the school know."

"We're twins, Cersei you bitch!"

She cocked her head silently. Jaime sat there, fuming on the floor, lost to rage and regret and perplexion. After a while of managing not to fly at her and tear her precious golden hair out, Jaime sat himself on the bed next to her, and took the bottle from her hand. "We're twins, Cersei, you bitch." He repeated, quieter this time. "We were inseparable. When were tiny bastards and mum used to take us out to the beach every Saturday. You were so concerned for me when I'd toss myself off the cliffs, you said cliffdiving wasn't a thing. When did you become an alcoholic bitch? I mean, you were always a bitch, and so was I really but –"

"If I was anyone else I'd apologise, but unlike anyone else I have _nothing_ to apologise for, _nothing_. What you saw in the drawer was everything I couldn't get out in all those months. I've been going slowly, but come to think of it, why should I? I'm right and the world's wrong, it's not a _sin_, it's not a _bad _thing."

"You're talking like a crazy person!"

"No, Jaime, you're mistaken. I'm the only sane person around here, and yet nothing ever works."

"Maybe that's because you're a bitch."

"Jaime, you're not going to tell anyone. I told Dad about you cliffdiving and he put a sharp end to it, and look where that got us. She's dead and you're strictly forbidden from cliffdiving to remember her. I'm dealing with my own business my own way. You're not going to tell anyone. You're not." She was Cersei, so she'd cut out the _please_s but he knew they would be there, unspoken. He nodded slightly, rising. What were you meant to do when you discovered your sister was a teenage alcoholic? It could be worse, couldn't it? And yes, he was 'strictly forbidden' to go cliffdiving, but he'd still gone cliffdiving about a thousand times since he'd been strictly forbidden. Cersei was even worse for defying orders. But he knew how to safely toss himself into the sea. Cersei probably didn't know how to safely handle this addiction or whatever the fuck it was.

Classic Jaime was creeping back in, though, snapping at him. Oh, gods, when did he so unfortunately acquire a conscience? They were bollocks, why did anyone bother with one? But then…

"I'm not."

"Good. I do love you Jaime, I promise. The world's just fucked up. I knew you'd do the right thing. Good. Good." Cersei smiled, and he realized there were tears in her eyes. Of anger, sadness, of whatever else, of all of it, he didn't know, and didn't want to. She stood up, and lead him to her door, paused, stared at him. They'd always been the same height, but she stood so much shorter now. "Because it'd be such a shame to tarnish your golden reputation. Why, _Brienne Tarth? _That might do a whole lot more than tarnish it."

And she swept past him down the stairs.

**A/N ~ **I do so apologise for any OOC behaviour in this, I have indeed tried to alter them enough so that they all fit modern day society better :/ Also, I'm not too fond of this chapter BUT the following five chapters span over the length of the school camping trip which is basically (spoiler alert) just Jaime/Brienne fluffery and is so cute and fun to write so.


	13. Like Little Kids (With Tents)

**The Adventures of Super Jock and Awkward Girl**

**A/N ~ **This is so much fun to write, oh my gosh, and yes I am drawing on my own experiences at school camping trips. Sorry this one's a shortie, but I'm drawing out this little trip of fluffery as much as humanly possible. You'll soon see why. As always, thank you for your lovely reviews, and your patience with my imbecilic internet. This fic doesn't exist without y'all.

**Disclaimer ~** It's still not mine :c George's creations, I'm just borrowing them so they can endure whatever whims I see fit.

**Coming Up… **The poor little over-indulged spoilt little rich kid struggles to do things for himself, news is received that may be the best thing or the worst thing that has ever happened to Jaime, distractions are good, fresh air is good, and insects are not good… **Find out in The Adventures of Super Jock and Awkward Girl!**

**1. ****Like Little Kids (With Tents)**

Jaime was pretty certain, when he boarded the coach, that he was about to have the worst experience of his life.

His twin sister was an alcoholic conniving little bitch, his mother was dead, his father was condemning him into this whole wretched affair with the promise of the best uni in the world, his right hand was useless, his science partner was Brienne Tarth, and he hadn't played football in months. And get somehow, this still got the crown for _most dreaded._

The only person he remotely liked going on the school camping trip was Rhaegar Targaryen, so he crowded into the sprawling back seat of the coach with him, Lyanna Stark and her blue hair that heralded his sister's drinking problems, Brandon Stark, and Elia Martell. Rhaegar was coming for the extra credit – or that was his official tagline. Jaime knew Rhaegar, and he knew he was coming because he wanted to. Lyanna was coming because she had been promised the chance to throw someone in a lake. Brandon was coming because he was still fuming about the incident at the party, and his breakup with Cat, and needed to escape the sight of her pretty red hair for a bit, and Elia because her family were moving house and wanted a weekend away from the stress. The remainder of the cool crowd had been scraped together by the Main Event, the Main Event's mental girlfriend, the Hot One – Jaime knew his place – the Pretty Much As Mental As His Sister One, and That One Who Doesn't Really Make An Impression And Just Tags After Ashara D Who Is Not Here. What a fucking golden squadron they made.

Few others were tagging along. There were of course the usual suspects who leapt at any chance to evade people and school in general for a week; Littlefinger Baelish, poor sod, with his nose all crooked where Brandon broke it – tensions between the two were still high, and Jaime doubted it was a clever idea to shove them on the same bus; Podrick Payne with his stutter and his rabbit-in-headlights eyes; Brienne; one of her three point two friends, some ponce named Hyle Hunt; some girl named Pia who would be going to the same skiving point as Tysha if not for some random rich relative, and a smattering of every other Pate-Tansy-Willem he barely knew.

They made for a sad little bunch. Some guy who worked at the grounds they were going to had hopped on board with his thousand-watt grin, rambling about what they'd be doing, and the food and board, but Jaime could see in his eyes he wanted to raise an eyebrow at the collection of idiots he'd been burdened with. He wanted to jump up and scream.

But he didn't, sadly, so the coach groaned to life and rolled on. Rhaegar and Lyanna were animatedly chattering about something or other, whilst Elia made futile attempts to join in, looking quite miserable. It was no secret she was one of the million imbeciles who fancied the Prince of the Dragons. Brandon joined in, but half-heartedly, and nobody was missing the deadly, nearly-frothing-at-the-mouth looks he was giving to Petyr a few seats ahead.

Jaime glared at the fingerprinted glass beside him, and the hastily fleeing roads and houses and trees beyond. This was a good thing. This just brought him closer to gaining enough favour to contribute to getting into Kings Landing. Because he wanted to. Despite everything, he _so_ wanted to. The day was bright but his mood was dark. He didn't know why. He'd barely slept last night, having left his packing to then, and when he had his fragmented dreams were full of guns and empty glass bottles and a bright and brilliant blue.

It took but a couple of hours to arrive at the Highgarden Manor Grounds, and it took about five minutes before Jaime grew so fucked off at his two _happy_ acquaintances and their nattering that he ignored them completely in favour of his iPod headphones. The next thing he knew, Elia was tapping him awake and everyone around him was undoing seatbelts and filtering off the coach. Oh. Well then.

He groaned and blinked, resolving to splash some water on his face next chance he got. It was his go to response following unwanted sleep. The truth was, even if Jaime was far too stubborn to ever admit it to himself, he felt better for his sleep. his head was still heavy, but he saw clearer and absorbed deeper. Vague images swam in his subconscious – better ones than last night, of calm solitude and peace against a pretty cobalt backdrop. Those fleeting pictures swam away as he woke – but it was as if he'd had a very, very good dream that he didn't remember, but knew he had, and that had reset the tone of the day.

Jaime threw himself off the bus and blinked in the sudden rush of shocking sunlight.

Mr. R Tarly, their woodwork teacher and the leader of the adult staff on this particular expedition was barking orders at everyone in sight, as he was so happiest doing, even if he always looked so fucking grim, and Jaime gathered that the general idea was to grab your bag from the storage under the coach, follow the crowd and hope for the best.

Jaime did just that, taking special care to put in some pure platinum snide japes regarding Tarly, to Rhaegar and Brandon, as he lugged his enormous North Face bag along the gravel path that cut through the tree-lined grass. The annual extra-credit camping trip to Highgarden was an awards programme for something or other, and something Jaime had never experienced before. Mostly because it was a bunch of losers sitting around singing Kumbaya or some shit; it primarily existed because Willas Tyrell's dad was a wealthy benefactor of the school and some distant relation of his owned Highgarden Manor. Manor. You'd have thought if it was such a fancy Manor house they wouldn't have to sleep on the floor with a bit of cloth over their heads, but whatever. Jaime was willing to let that pass.

At least Rhaegar was here. (Jaime pointedly refused to admit that Rhaegar's time would be taken up with his blue-haired loudmouth of a girlfriend.) (Who coincidentally happened to be his alcoholic twin's arch nemesis.) (Yeah, nemesis.) (That's what Cersei called her anyway.) (But Cersei had problems.)

So he followed Rhaegar along, letting himself laugh, and hefting his quite possibly overpacked bag with considerable difficulty, considering his limited use of a certain hand. It took about five minutes before the grass-and-gravel opened up onto a tree-ensnared field. Beyond which Jaime could see a sliver of a lake. Huh. Maybe the Tyrells were more loaded than he thought. Not more than the Lannisters though. Of course not. At the head of the field sat a large, grubby once-white tent.

"Right, hey kids, welcome to Highgarden!" Jaime didn't take half a second to begin loathing their assigned staff member more than life itself. Patronizing, grinning, dead eyed. Bloody hell. "I'm Leonette Fossoway, but feel free to call me Lea, and I'm going to be your guide for the next couple of days. Now, you guys are from –" She scanned a clipboard. "Westeros High? Cool. As you can see, that over there is the staff tent, where we'll be putting up the week's schedule for you to check and sign up for things as you like. You'll be offered a whole range of super-cool stuff here, but no pressure, only do what you want to do. But remember – you'll also be competing against a bunch of other schools, so try to do as much as you can, as best you can." Oh, right, because that was _no pressure, only do what you want to do._ What were they competing for, anyway? Some marks on a scoreboard? A claim to a pile of bunny shit? "Orientation will begin after you set up, so I'll be back in about an hour to show you the cafeteria, showers, and everything else," She spoke with the enforced jubilance of a hired helper, but it was so freaking military – she'd said that same thing hundreds of times. Jaime decided never to ever become any sort of guide at any sort of place.

Lea jogged off, possibly to greet some other group of reluctant teenagers, and Mr Randyll Tarly drifted back in to face the pathetic cluster of volunteering students. Oh good gods. Jaime whispered some joke to Brandon, slouching beside him, who sniggered. Tarly fixed them with a purely satanic stare. "Is there something amusing you'd like to share with the whole group, Mr Lannister?" _Yeah, there is, but I don't think you'd appreciate it you emotionless bastard. _"No?" _Well. _"As Mr Lannister and Mr Stark just so kindly demonstrated, I think it's necessary to separate you from those who are distraction to you." _Like me, you mean._ Jaime knew that Randyll Tarly hated few people more than he did him, and that was saying something. "So Jaime Lannister, I think you can share a tent with –" Clipboard funtime. "Hyle Hunt and Petyr Baelish." He heard Hunt give a theatrical groan from where he was standing. As Mr Terror Tarly went on, rattling names off for tent assignments, Jaime revelled in his misfortune. Then again, it hardly surprised him, what with his luck these days. And it could always be worse. Cersei could be here.

"Now, go on. Go on! Tents, up! You'll find each them all in the staff marquee, use some initiative and help each other." And with that, Tarly disappeared into said staff marquee, probably to sit down and have nice cup of coffee whilst sadistically watching sullen teenagers fail at putting up tents.

People were drifting awkwardly toward their tent-mates. Baelish kept glancing at Jaime, almost uncertain whether he should come to him or not, and Hunt seemed to be ignoring the whole situation, instead complaining loudly to Pod Payne, and another one of his friends who had been dragged into this farce, something Ambrose. _If you want something done right, you have to get the hell on with it yourself. _Jaime glared and trudged into the staff marquee to claim a musty-smelling tent pack. Tarly smiled at him and he had to restrain himself from kicking him.

He dumped the tent on the sun-warmed grass, and squinted through the light at the idiots sharing his accommodation. Apparently everyone was just helping their own friends to put up tents and hence restricting time spent with idiots they loathed. Which was fine, by Jaime, but Rhaegar and Lya and Brandon and Elia were already working on a tent together, and he could only use one hand.

To his left, Hyle Hunt had began to help Brienne with hers. Jaime watched in stunned despise as they managed to construct the thing remarkably quickly. He stared from his useless hand to the tent and threw himself down in the grass for lack of anything else to do. He'd wait, Rhaegar or Elia Martell or _some_body would come over and put his up for him in a minute.

A minute was apparently half an hour. That was when Petyr Baelish came over and started to draw out tent pegs and other shit Jaime didn't understand. They didn't speak to each other and they didn't progress all too far. Baelish drifted off again to probably go somewhere he wasn't wanted or needed. Jaime began to relinquish hope, since Rhaegar and his tentmates were already setting up and unpacking inside theirs. "Hyle!" Jaime called languidly, trying to mask his irritation. "I don't know if you've noticed, but we don't have anywhere to sleep tonight so if you could stop wasting time talking bollocks to _Podrick Payne_, get the hell over here and _help_ the poor broken-handed bastard you've the honour of sharing with!"

Hunt said something quite obviously useless to Pod and hastened to Jaime's side. "Right."

"Yeah."

"Well, what do you want me to do?"

"Put it up, I can't do it."

"Why not?"

"Because of this thing, you moron," Jaime flapped his bound arm in Hyle's face. Hunt was about to say something, before Jaime continued his annoyed muttering. "And because I'm a Lannister, we have people to put up our tents, not that we ever have need of tents," Entirely unaware that he'd just condemned himself, damn it, he glanced up to see his tent-partner harder-faced than before.

"Oh, so you're rich and pretty and too good for me, is that what you're bullshitting?"

"No, that's not what I'm _bullshitting_, that's what I'm telling you."

"Then you can tell it to yourself, dickhead." Hyle sighed exasperatedly and trudged off to continue ranting at and aiding Pod Payne, who was somehow dangerously close to spearing himself with a tent pole. _Classic Jaime one, Broken Hand Sod zero. Well fucking done, you stunning idiot._ He could faintly hear Hyle and his friends' conversing. It mostly concerned him and whether anyone in the entire human race could stand him. Charming. _And here I was, thinking everyone loved the quarterback._ They now appeared to be debating who should go put his tent up for him, since Hyle did have to sleep in it after all. "Oh, bloody fucking hell, you can tolerate him, Bri, go on, help poor Hyley."

Jaime just about heard Brienne mutter something he would never have expected her to even know, let alone use so colourfully, and trudge over dejectedly, ignoring him completely as she started militarily assembling poles. "Oh, come on, _Bri," _Jaime tried to smile, at least satisfied that he'd have somewhere relatively dry to sleep tonight. "Friends, we agreed. And we were getting on so well."

"Jaime, please don't ever call me Bri again."

"Oh, but Hyle can do it and it's fine. What happened to our truce, anyway?"

"Hyle can do it and I'll kick him in the bollocks later." She paused. "Nothing's happened to our truce. I just happen to have my own tent to put up."

"No, it's fine, look, Pia and Lyanna can do it themsel – no, wait, she's trying to _swordfight_ Pia with a tent pole. That's not what they're for, Lyanna! Get a life or counselling or something!"

Brienne glanced up at him for half a moment, and for half that half a moment he thought she was about to smile. "Right," When he surveyed the current situation of his accommodation, he was adequately pleased to see it was actually coming along. "I'm going to get the poles in, you hold it steady. Do you think you can manage that?"

"Oh, it'll be horribly taxing." He feigned shock and performed his best Victorian-lady swoon, grinning as he came back up to swipe the canvas with his decent, retarded left hand.

"Jut hold it by the corner," Jaime felt as though a _you idiot_ was missing from that sentence, but he complied anyway. He resolved to teach her about insulting people. It was an art, really, an art she of all people ought to learn. They worked in harmony for a while, Jaime joking about and good-naturedly ridiculing the universe, Brienne putting up his tent. When they had something that looked like an almost construction, he sighed a theatrical sigh of content and flopped back down in the grass.

"You're done, Jaime, you can lie in there. Don't expect me to unpack for you."

"What?" Jaime fell into mock-horror. "But that's the best part about breaking your dominant hand, having people do things for you!" She rolled her eyes, and Jaime began to realize he'd brighten up considerably since the bus. The sun hung high and strong above, and around them a ring of tents had begun to rise. Most who had managed to complete the task set before them had disappeared inside their tents to unload their stuff.

"No, Jaime, you've been having people do things for you your entire life." That was meant in jest but somehow clawed through. Huh. He had been having people do things for him his entire life, poor over-indulged spoilt little rich kid. And it was good. Gardeners, housekeepers, nannies and extra tutors when he was tiny. His thoughts returned unbidden to Kings Landing College. Dad'd get him a little property outside the campus, he assumed, but would he actually be able to do anything in it? Meh. _I'll live on Dominos and takeout if I have to_. Then he wondered if Cersei would share that property or get one of her own. Shudder.

"Maybe so," Jaime agreed, "But at least I know how to enjoy it."

"You know how to milk it, you mean."

"You love me really, everyone loves me, I'm amazing and loveable."

"Nobody loves you, Jaime. You're arrogant and annoying."

"I love me."

"Of course you do."

"I think Hyle Hunt loves you."

"Fuck off."

_The open air really does bring out this one's cruder side._ The one thought that kept returning to the forefront of Jaime's head was a simple _this is nice, you're having fun_. Surrounded by losers and sheep shit and old trees, and he was actually having an alright time _not_ at the cost of somebody else. Weird. _Weird._ Maybe this was what other people felt like. No, of course not. Other people didn't have Classic Jaime annotating and commentating on everything in his head, and fighting for dominance, fighting to spill out free from his mouth. "Oh, get down here you great lump, the grass is lovely."

"Are you drunk, Jaime?"

_No, but at home my sister probably is. _Ah, that. Jaime was just shifting to rise and dump his enormous bulk of a bag into the tent when their irritatingly punchable guide returned, rambling about the grounds and facilities, and then congratulated everyone on constructing their tents. It was hollow, and hollower for the golden-haired quarterback who didn't actually do anything but swear and laugh. Maybe he was drunk. Drunk on sunlight. At least it was bright, and the previous days' rain had subsided. Maybe it had subsided just for this trip. Maybe this trip wasn't going to be quite so dismal as he first thought. It was almost like when he was a little kid, and he'd run around, and the sunlight itself seemed magical. _Well fuck, I am turning into a Ned Stark. _Nah – he was far more attractive.

He held out his good hand. Brienne just stared at it. "Yeah?"

"Pull me up, pity the half-cripple."

"You're not a cripple, you fool."

"No, I'm not." He smiled as she complied and he lurched to his feet, checking his iPhone hadn't fallen from his pocket as it was so prone to do, and made to follow the crowd of stragglers. "Come on, Brienne. Let's go orientate ourselves."


	14. A Regular Mr Darcy

**The Adventures of Super Jock and Awkward Girl**

**A/N ~ **Ah, the fluff. Also, I'll warn you now – if you think the fluff is taking over, well… It lasts for a good few chapters before Classic Jaime returns. Also, it may interest you to keep in mind that pretty much all of this is based on my experience with school camping trips.

**Disclaimer ~** My recent plan, involving a pickaxe, hempen rope, three medium lemons and Jeyne Poole has failed. Though I'll not rest until I own A Song of Ice and Fire and can force Jaime and Brienne to get over themselves and realize they're irrevocably in love, for now it remains the property of George the Fabulous And Sadistic.

**Coming up… **Jaime's interlude away from life simply gets better and better, people relax, and how in the name of the seven are teenagers meant to assemble working rafts by themselves? **Find out in The Adventures of Super Jock and Awkward Girl!**

**14. ****A Regular Mr Darcy**

At breakfast, Jaime found himself gravitating toward Brienne.

(The camping trip must have drained all the good judgement from him, really, because he didn't even realize it.)

The Highgarden Manor cafeteria was a huge, gleaming thing, all polished floors and low panel ceiling and long plastic tables, the enormous, sprawling sort with seats attached. Through silvery double doors the clatter of the kitchens drifted, and pictures and noticeboards tacked across walls displayed random kids and teenagers doing a variety of different activities, and schedules and adverts. Last night had been a mild success, since Petyr Baelish barely spoke to him because he, for once, _had nothing to say to him_. Hyle Hunt in turn blanked him and glared at him, and then proceeded to snore absurdly loudly. At first Jaime thought a pig had somehow gotten into the tent. But once you got used to the unsettling grunts and the stereotypical crickets, in their odd cacophony, you slept quite well. Naturally Jaime, accustomed to memory foam and king sized thousand tog duvets, had taken a good while to get comfortable, but he had and he'd slept a, for once, dreamless sleep.

When he awoke, he thought it would be late, but it turned out, when he'd wandered back from the toilet block and turned his phone on, that it was barely six am. The onset of sunlight had roused him. The thick dark curtains he had at home blocked out everything. But still, he'd hardly felt so wide awake. He made a pre-breakfast snack of one of the many crisp packets he'd stuffed in the side pockets of his bag, and played Doodle Jump until Mr Satanic Fucking Randyll Tarly came round yelling at everyone to get up. Honestly, he thought he'd come on a school camping trip, not a military encampment. Jaime pitied the poor fools who were woken that way. (Except Hyle Hunt.) (Nobody pitied Hyle Hunt.) (He was a dick, Jaime had decided.)

Either way, they'd all somehow found their way into clothes and stumbled through the dewy grass to the cafeteria-kitchen block. Rhaegar and Lyanna were being quite repulsively romantic, so he steered clear of them – he didn't want to end up like Elia Martell, looking on a futilely attempting to join in. Brandon Stark removed himself so far away from everybody but a girl Jaime was faintly sure was called Barbrey Dustin, and was so silent and sullen he was probably restraining himself from lunging across the table and obliterating Littlefinger. So it was for lack of anywhere else to go really, a feeling quite new to him, that Jaime sat himself down next to Brienne and happily began loading his plate with the assorted breakfast foods that lined the middle of the table. Toast, spread with Marmite. Scrambled egg. Sausage. He filled a plastic cup from a plastic jug of orange juice and offered some to her. She ignored him and went on picking at her muffin.

"What are you doing, Jaime?"

…There it was. Just when he thought they were becoming comfortable.

"I'm having breakfast, what are you doing?" _She calls me Jaime now_. Brienne looked as though she was going to say something in reply, something Jaime didn't doubt would be long-winded, disjointed and useless bullcrap, and then thought better of it. He was glad. Half the time the only thing that came out of her mouth was bollocks condemning her to public ridicule, but there you go. "We're friends now, aren't we?" She didn't reply. "We're friends, that was officially agreed on. Friends are accommodating to friends. And all my other friends are either too busy with blue-haired footballers or are too busy with not tearing Baelish's intestines out – not that I'm really friends with the Stark."

"We're friends because of science class, we don't…"

"We don't have restrictions, because we're friends, yes? But surely that was what you meant to say?"

"Jaime Lannister, you're a complete and utter arse."

"Brienne Tarth, you're the first person ever to not want to eat breakfast with me."

"I'm entirely sure there are hundreds of people who don't want to have breakfast with you."

"Gods, no. There's maybe a dozen, and you're their queen."

"None of these other people here are having breakfast with you and there's more than a dozen."

"Yeah, but they're all losers."

"Be quiet."

Jaime grinned. Good-naturedly annoy people – check. He was already in high spirits. When breakfast was all cleared away they had a half-hour slot before the first activities of the day, and Jaime filled it with a quick, much-appreciated shower. In his pessimistic horror the previous day, he'd expected there to be but freezing drizzle dripping from the showerhead, but it was actually satisfactorily warm. He returned to the campsite to find gaggles of surly teenagers he didn't recognize amongst the ones he did. He turned to Lyanna Stark, who was rambling on at some tiny loser named Howland Reed. "What's going on?"

"You missed Tetchy Tarly's rally speech in favour of your beauty time. Enough to make anyone suicidal. We're joining with two other schools 'cause there's about two of us. Then we're splitting into groups – group one doing this while the others do that and that and whatever so the stuffs aren't overcrowded." Then she turned back to Howland, blue waves of hair falling in her face.

Jaime trudged through the substantially larger throng, revelling in the much-familiarized stares and smiles and girly giggles from the new additions. Hardly any of them were hot. (Properly hot anyway.) (Like, Melisandre Asshai hot.) (Jaime loathed Melisandre Asshai.) (But she was really hot.) (How she ended up with a grim-faced non-person like Stannis Baratheon he'd never know.) (Or Ashara Dayne hot.) (Again, he wasn't interested.) (But she had purple eyes.) (How was that not slightly cool?) (Hell, even Catelyn Tully.) (She was pretty hot.) (And Lyanna Stark.) (Dacey Mormont.) (Even Elia was alright looking.) (Just as long as it wasn't his sister.)

(Even though he was pretty indifferent to most of them, Westeros High had turned out some quite impressive girls.) (He didn't feel a need to get a leg over any of them) (But it was always nice to have good scenery.) (Thank you Westeros High.)

(But then, there was also Brienne.) (God knows what happened there.)

He somehow managed to find Rhaegar, through following Lya and Howland. He was talking with Brandon about football, and Brandon was no doubt debating whether or not to kill Baelish there and then. So he hung around Rhaegar and Lya, the latter of whom received about a dozen evil glares from girls realizing she was with Prince T.

Tarly and several others, assumed teachers from the other schools, were conferring clipboards and by the time the day had darkened and started to very gradually spit tiny specks of rain, managed to rattle off lists. He'd be in the second group, with Podrick Payne and Brienne, and a smattering of others from Westeros High who he barely knew. Mostly it was kids from the other schools. Still, at least he had one sort-of scientifically official 'friend'.

He stood around for a while whilst the staff conferred. Leonette Fossoway took one of the other groups for rock climbing, and their new guide, a red-faced pimply idiot didn't seem to bother introducing himself. Instead, he told them, they'd be going around to the lake for raft-building. And then taking out their built rafts on said lake. Jaime was quite obviously going to drown.

By the time they'd all trooped round to the vast expanse of silvery-murky water, it had started spitting and a few of the girls had hoods up. The weather didn't put off Mr Pimple. Littered around a hard dirt shore were reels of rope, enormous logs, and large, dinted blue barrels. How they were ever going to make _rafts_ out of these was beyond him. Let alone rafts they were expected to make float. "Right, into groups of two to four, and get going. You can go off so long as you don't go too far, to work. If you need any help with design or knots, just give me a call. Try and make them as simple and efficient as possible – you'll be racing these around the lake. You'll have an hour to make them, and an hour to race, including shower time afterward; I can promise you at least a few of you will be in the drink by the end of this!"

Jaime instinctively hovered around Brienne who had instinctively magnetized to little Podrick Payne. "Room for a stunningly attractive third?" Jaime enquired hopefully. Brienne muttered something about _don't flatter yourself, you're a bastard_ but it was in a nice way, he supposed. And Podrick just nodded awkwardly. Around, the others were diverging into groups and dragging wood and rope off to various different corners of the bank, field, and shallows of the clusters of trees framing the water.

"Right, Brienne, grab some of those log type things, I'll get the barrels, Podrick, try not to fall into the lake. And get rope."

"Nobody's crowned you yet, Jaime." Brienne told him, in all seriousness. "Help me with the heavy stuff. Podrick… Get rope." Jaime burst out laughing, and Pod even gave a tentative smile before scurrying off to grab a reel of rope. Brienne frowned as they made their way over to the pile of smoothed logs. He used to think scowls suited her better than smiles, but he wasn't quite so sure now. (If the big ugly bitch would just relent and laugh then he could decide.) (But whatever.) (He was cool.)

"Right." Brienne knelt down by the pile. "How many do we need? Four? I'll take two one at a time, you do the same. Get the barrels last."

Jaime leant to drag one off and dropped it immediately. Brienne glanced up, expressionless. "I'm an almost-cripple, you have to help me."

"Jaime - "

"Don't make me beg. Just come on, Brienne, help me with my wood."

He watched a familiar splotchy redness crawl up her thick neck. "_Jaime."_

Jaime grinned. "I _need_ help with my wood, Brienne. I need you to help me with my wood."

He burst out laughing a few seconds before she did. It was like confirmation. That this was all jest, and genuine. A couple of actual friends having an actual mess around. _Well, fuck me. Jaime Lannister _friends _with Brienne motherfucking Tarth._ _Gods._ Eh. There was nobody cool around to see it. Brienne eventually relented, trying not to smile, hefting the other end of the thing and dragging it over to their little workspace together. "That's what I'm talking about, thank you, thank you for treating the wood right."

"Do you have to make everything awkward, Lannister?" She was still restraining whatever meagre joviality she had.

"Of course I do," Jaime replied. "It's my special talent, so long as absurd hotness doesn't constitute a special talent. Like if I was a super hero."

"What, making things awkward? _No_. You'd be Arrogance Man." She dropped her end and turned back over to heft another over her shoulder and drag it across, dumping it with ease. She was stronger than he'd thought. "Captain Idiot. Full of Himself Boy. Super Jock."

Jaime considered. "I'm fine with all of those. Anything with my face attached has a certain ring to it. What'd you be? Boring Woman? Awkward Girl?"

She gave him a withering look. "Be quiet and get some barrels, cripple."

Within the hour, they'd manage to lash the logs together with some success. Podrick only tied his fingers together twice, which everyone agreed was quite an achievement for him, considering. They'd tied the battered plastic barrels to the underside of their would-be raft, as hopeful floatation devices. Several other groups of kids had copied that idea, something which made Jaime feel absurdly proud. Really, he'd just sat around whining about his hand and happily teasing the other two, but still. He'd always been the guy kicking other people into giving him answers, or copying off of them, not the other way around. All these new experiences. He was beginning to hardly know himself.

It was then that they were asked to line up along the shore of the lake. The scanty shower of spitting rain had long since ceased. In fact, it was quite sunny behind a scattering of clouds. On the count of three they'd all be asked to push out and race around the lake once. (Jaime was still quite unsure of the awfully murky, dark-green depths.) (But as if he'd admit that to himself.) (Let alone anyone else.)

When the whistle blew, Jaime, on the bank of hard-packed mud, pushed them out with all his one-handed strength, and attempted to vault himself on. He slipped. (He was blaming that big Wall Academy oaf who crushed his hand so long ago, in all fairness.) Brienne and Podrick lunged, grabbing on. Podrick, unfortunately, tried to grab at Jaime's wounded hand. Bursts of searing agony. He yelped, and Pod leg go.

But on the bright side, Jaime wasn't the only one in the rather disgusting waters. Several feeble girls' attempts at raft-building had failed immediately. Jaime sputtered in the water, trying to keep his hair above the surface, for a few moments, before Brienne, a spectacular shade of scarlet at everyone's staring, managed to lug him up onto their successfully (if a little shakily) afloat 'raft'.

He grinned. "Well. I think that went very well, don't you?"

"Shut up and pole." Brienne slammed a rowing pole into his hand. (Singular.)

"Do you know," Jaime turned to Pod. "I think she's starting to like me."

Their raft being one of the most successful, the three of them began to paddle furiously. If Jaime was going to become a total boy-scout camping-is-such-fun sadsack dickhead, then fucking hell, he was going to do it right. Somewhere between all the shouting and screaming as people fell in, the three of them, by some miracle, began to pull ahead. A quartet of kids from Qarth College only remained ahead of them.

All this time off of football, Jaime Lannister had almost forgotten how competitive he was.

Until he became suddenly entangled in a pole-paddle-whatever-the-fuck-it-was battle with one of the Qarth kids'. It was a simple mistake, on his part, for once in his life. All he'd done was overstretch an _inch_ too far. And the bastard on the other raft started to beat back.

So, whilst Brienne attempted to steer and Pod attempted not to fall in the water holding them up, Jaime knelt on the soaked, wobbling wood and mercilessly began to batter Qarth's paddle, grunting and roaring and laughing as he pressed his obvious, natural upper hand. (Even if he was using his unnatural, useless hand. When one of the guy's friends used his pole to batter their raft, attempting to capsize them, Jaime gave a hoot. He tore off his hoodie, tossing it aside, where it landed on Podrick. Oh well. "_Shit just got real, you scholarship-programme dicks."_

Jaime hit at their raft, and the wood between him and the water began to jerk furiously. Oh. They were coming closer and closer to the dirt bank again, they were going to beat these sorry motherfuckers, they were, _they were_. The shore sped toward them, as flecks of freezing water spattered his face. Yeah! Even in something this utterly sucky and useless, Jaime freaking Lannister would always win. He was Jaime Lannister.

Then the raft tipped over, and all he could see was shifting weeds. And he broke the surface of the lake and realized he'd been underwater, blinking rapidly. (This was probably no good for his hand, but who gave a toss.) He was so close to the shore as well. Brienne and Podrick were there, looking too amused for his liking, and too dry for his liking, too. More a little damp than anything else, damn them. Ditto the Qarth bastard squadron.

Jaime swam foreward, spitting a little, before his feet could sit easy on the muddy floor of the lake, and he could roll his shoulders back and comfort his aggrieved, broken hand enough to confirm it would survive, and stride, quite contently annoyed-amused, grinning despite himself, golden curls dripping, clothes freezing and clinging. He tossed his head to shake free most of the drips. (Jaime knew he was one of the rare, blessed specimen who would look more like a model doing so than a golden retriever.) (At least, he hoped.) (No, fuck it, he was hot.)

Several of the (equally soaking) girls from other schools on the shore seemed to be enjoying the view. He tried to revel in it as he always had. He heard someone mutter something about Pride and Prejudice and nearly snorted. He grinned at Brienne, unwittingly – equally as unwittingly thinking it was sort of a breath of fresh air to have a girl not scream over him.

"Are you alright?" Podrick asked, when he greeted them. Jaime ran his hand through his curls, sniffing.

"Grand." He paused, and glanced at Brienne. "Oh, yes. I'm a regular Mr Darcy."


	15. The Sad Half-Orphan Kissing Club

**The Adventures of Super Jock and Awkward Girl**

**A/N ~ **It's here. The chapter we've all been waiting for – don't say you haven't. Also, I stumbled across a model named Chloe Norgaard and she's so my pick for Super-Jock-and-Awkward-Girl Lyanna. Don't even ask.

**Disclaimer ~ **It's still not mine alright, bloody hell, on with the chapter, on with the chapter!

**Coming Up… **Jaime isn't quite at campfire standard yet, news is received that could either be the best thing ever to happen to him or the worst, a 'you will' is fulfilled, and something quite unexpected happens. **Find out in The Adventures of Super Jock and Awkward Girl!**

** 15.****The Sad Half-Orphan Kissing Club**

That night, with his hair clean and shining, free of pond whatever-the-fuck-was-in-it, Jaime Lannister decided that however much Ned Stark-esque bollocks he'd let slide these past few days, he would not, repeat _not_, condemn himself to singing lousy songs around a campfire, while some idiot with an acoustic guitar he couldn't _really_ play fumbled away at the slightly too-tightened strings.

No. Not going to happen. No, no, and lastly no. He was Jaime Lannister.

So, whilst the groups from the other schools fell away, and they regrouped for dinner, Jaime snatched up the opportunity to see if anyone wanted to hang around the lake with him or something. Highgarden Manor's cafeteria rang with chatter as he took his place beside Rhaegar and piled spaghetti onto his plate. Brandon was slightly more alive than he'd been earlier, only slightly mind, and Jaime still caught the occasional look of pure loathing towards the nerdy little nothing who'd ruined his relationship and, by extension, his life. Perhaps it was Jaime's little-less-than-indifference toward the Starks that made it all the more fun to watch. Like waiting for a time bomb to explode. (From a safe distance.) (When it went off, he was sure it was going to be even higher impact than his sister and her multitude of little bombs.)

"So, how was Boy Scout Bollocks 101?" Jaime inquired, stabbing at a sausage and sliding it onto his plate. He didn't really care what two out of four Starks, Rhaegar T and _Elia Martell_ did with their day (or rather how they enjoyed what they did, since they'd all done the same things, just in different orders.) but it was always nice to have an opening line before pleading your friends to abandon the first bonfire of the trip. (Well, not plead.) (He was Jaime Lannister, he did not plead.) (And they were only the dregs of his friends.) (He didn't like the Starks.) (Or Elia, particularly.) (And he looked up to Rhaegar on the pitch, but he was hardly a hilariously fun guy.) (He wished Gerold Hightower was here, or Arthur Dayne.) (They'd have joined him in sinking some of the canoes in the shack by the lake.) (There was a fun thought.)

"Barely bearable." Brandon muttered dejectedly into his meal.

"Ignore my brother, he's pissed because my good friend Catelyn doesn't want to bang him anymore, because he beat up a little kid. And because the little kid told everyone he banged Catelyn. In all fairness, Catelyn should be the pissed one here." Lyanna pointed out through mouthfuls of spaghetti bolognaise. _Oh Lya._ Jaime noted that she didn't once stop shovelling the stuff into her mouth. Charming. What Rhaegar saw in her he'd never know.

He saw Brandon's hand tighten on his fork. "If you weren't my little sister." (Jaime wanted to point out that Brandon's best friend was doing that little sister.) (But he wasn't so stupid, contrary to popular opinion.)

"Starks." Jaime nodded. Lyanna shrugged and grabbed for one of the bowls of sauce and started just eating it with a spoon, strands of blue hair escaping their hasty tie, and Jaime frowned. _Why am I friends with these people?_ "Play nicely."

Meanwhile, Rhaegar had finished his meal and lead Lyanna away to go and sit by the lake for a bit, damn them and their romance, and Brandon soon after excused himself to sulk in his tent, or perhaps plot against Petyr Baelish. Either way, Jaime decided he only cared if it resulted in another classic fight that he could watch. Elia soon drifted off with some sort-of friend of hers, and Jaime was left alone. _And here I was, thinking I was one of the popular people in Westeros fucking High. _Then again, a tiny fraction of the other popular people in Westeros fucking High were here. Was that it then? Was he only popular amongst other people who were popular?

So he sighed and, as everyone began to disburse, and went trudging off to go and find Brienne. _Gods know why I bother. She's the least companionable human being I've ever had the misfortune to meet. _Just when they were getting comfortable with one another, she'd returned to her usual stupid quiet self when the daily mandatory activities were over. It seemed to Jaime that the laughter of the raft episode, and the rock climbing and canoeing that had followed seemed a world away. It'd only been a few hours.

He wandered through the camp when she didn't turn up. There was a little shop-like thing around the corner from their designated field, where most people hung around and bought snacks. (Those who were fool enough not to bring any themselves.) (Jaime had naturally stuffed his case with food before even considering packing other clothes.) The grass was damp, and the air surprisingly warm for this late in autumn. It had been for a while now. The colour and light of the day had began to ebb away in defeat and the sky, not yet dark, held a sort of tea-stained canvas colour.

"All I'm saying, is that people change. There's no reason, see, that Podrick here won't be a world-famous wrestler by the time he's thirty, except that –"

"That he has no muscle to speak of and stutters at the sight of, well, anything." Jaime cut Hyle Hunt off with a strained smile. "No offense intended, of course, Pod, I think I might just like you now." Podrick, Brienne, and Hyle. _What are they now, The Loser Squad?_ Eh. He _didn't_ mind Pod so much anymore, that was true. He was alright, once you got used to the rabbit eyes and the stutter. _Dear gods, did I really just – _ And Brienne was annoying and stubborn and stupid and ugly and he didn't mind her so much anymore, either. Maybe it was just numbing with time. Gods.

He needed to get back to the team.

"Right." Brienne muttered, staring down at her overlarge feet. "What are you doing, Jaime?"

"Too cool to be seen with the quarterback around Stutters and this guy?" Jaime flashed a smile. Brienne turned red and Jaime felt he ought to go. He was sick of the sight of The Three Tossers. "No, you all… Enjoy the campfire. I'm going to the lake."

"Why?"

"_Why_, why do you ask so many questions, woman?" Jaime muttered, as he traipsed on through the grass and the ring of tents. The truth was, he wasn't really sure why. He just knew that he, Jaime The Fucking Quarterback Lannister, could not stand to be stifled in favour of _camping_ for one more moment. He needed an interlude. It was at these times he'd usually stir something up and make a colossal prank of some sort with the others. But the others weren't here. Only Brandon _Stark_, Elia, and, (neither-of-them-notice-anything-but-each-other) Rhaegar-and-Lyanna.

Rhaegar and Lyanna. Oh, shit. Did they not say over dinner that they were going to the lake? _Oh, for Seven's sake, gods, mum, whoever's up there, what have I ever done to you? _ _Don't answer that._

He winced when the couple noticed him and smashed into obliteration his plans of turning back and playing iPhone games in his tent all evening. Behind him, the fire was just sparking to life, trailing tendrils of faintly waltzing smoke. Lyanna sat up in Rhaegar's arms and waved about. "Lannister!" Rhaegar murmured something to her and she hit him. "Lannister! Where you going?"

He was beginning to understand his drunken sister and her vendetta against the blue-haired Stark. "To the tents, like a normal person. The campfire's just started."

"Ooh, fire!" Lyanna yelled, springing to her feet and holding out her hand to drag Rhaegar to his feet. It took about a minute for the two of them to run over to him, Lyanna's blue hair, originally tied back carelessly now hanging half out of its abused rubber band. "There marshmallows? Give me a stick. Rhaegar, find me a stick."

"I don't think they'll have _marshmallows._" Jaime inwardly rolled his eyes.

"She doesn't want the stick to toast marshmallows, she wants to – set the stick on fire." Rhaegar clarified, looking happily exhausted with his mental girlfriend. What. Rhaegar glanced after Lya, now throwing herself about in a bush looking for a stick, and stood around until she jumped up again with a smear of earth on her cheek, and her hoodie considerably dirtier, and ran off, waving the twig. "Oh, alright then – Got to go, Jaime – have a nice evening," And with that Rhaegar ran after Lyanna, his silvery-blonde ponytail neater than his girlfriends' ever had a chance of being.

Well. That was that, then.

He trudged on towards the lake, somewhat bemused, but glad of the solitude. What? He'd never been _glad_ of solitude before, ever. _It's the hand_, he told himself. But he could take the hand out of its sling now, for a little while, even if it still had to be bandaged up for the bones to set. He could manage with it, in all its awkwardness. Jaime sat himself down and found the grass thankfully dry. He could hear the muffled shouts and laughing chatter of his classmates, but the crickets were louder here. He still wasn't sure why he wanted to be alone. He'd never wanted to be alone before. Ugh. Why did he have to start _thinking,_ all of a sudden? It didn't do anyone any good, least of all him.

It was maybe half an hour before the night settled in, and he felt a tentative tap on his shoulder. Jaime turned and smiled. "Couldn't stay away from my strong, silent hotness?"

"Shut up. I brought you this." Brienne clapped a flask of something into his hands and he stared at it. "Hot chocolate, Lannister. Everyone's drinking the whole of Highgarden's wares and I thought – I just thought maybe you'd – that you might like some?"

He was just on the verge of sending some default ridicule out of his mouth when he stopped himself short. "Thank you."

"Why aren't you at the fire? Everyone looks like their having fun."

"But not you?" He paused and shook his head. "Do I look like a bloody Ned Stark to you?"

She turned to leave, but after approximately three steps, Jaime did something either incredibly brave or incredibly stupid. He was going to side with the latter. "…Stop."

"What?"

Jaime patted the grass beside him. "Sit."

"I – "

"_Sit._"

Brienne sat, glancing out across the lake. It was almost silvery in this light, hardly recognizable as the mud pit Jaime had cavorted about in this morning, with each ripple highlighted by the shadows. _What are you doing, Lannister?_ He ignored himself. What was he doing? He wasn't sure. But he did know this was one of the few times he'd ever been alone with his real, unrestrained thoughts since he was born. "So what's the deal with you and that Hyle Hunt bastard?"

Brienne gave him a look of _can you not_. "There's no _deal_, Jaime. He _was_ a bastard, once, he started a bet last year, but I'm not talking about that with you. He's a friend. I didn't ask for him to be, but he thinks he is one, so he is."

"Great." Jaime loathed Hyle Hunt and he didn't know why. "He's a dick, Brienne."

"He's not a dick."

"He is. And I'm willing to bet that with my fucking luck he'll end up going to Kings Landing College with me." He muttered darkly.

Brienne paused for a moment or two, before managing to speak up. "He is – going to KL, he – I didn't know you were going there."

"I'm not. Not if I don't crack down and do some hard work, and get my hand miraculously recovered so I can get that football scholarship I always expected. Dad wants me to, though, me and Cers, and I want us to."

"I - I'm going to Kings Landing College. Dad said it was meant to be really nice, and I mean, we're not so rich, but - "

"_You're_ going to Kings Landing College?" Jaime felt something lift in his spirits, and he wasn't quite sure why. A familiar, ugly face at least.

"Yeah, and Hyle is too."

"Hyle."

_Why do you care anyway, Jaime_? He tried to ask himself, but his mind faltered and found no answer. "It's nice here," _It's nice here, Lannister, is that the best you can do? _Small talk had never been his area of expertise. He did loud, offensive, larger-than-life talk. Brienne didn't reply anyway. "I remember once, when we were little, _really_ tiny, might even be my youngest memory, mum took me and Cersei to the beach, and around the rock pools, and the water was really still, you know? Like the lake now. Cersei tried to pick up a crab, thinking it was a rock. She screamed when it lashed out and then scuttled off, and then mum laughed, and we were all laughing." _Dad hadn't been there. Even when mum was alive and he was sort of happier, he was never there. He lived for his career, his children were just ways to strengthen his marriage and keep the family going._

"She sounds like a very nice woman." Brienne managed awkwardly. _Why am I telling all this to this absurd ugly idiot?_

"Yeah, maybe. I don't even know anymore. I don't remember her, just that, at the beach. We've got a picture from that day, and I'm so tiny and wearing this coat that makes me look _round_. Mum looks just like Cersei in that picture. But honestly, she could have been a bitch, and I don't know, because I don't remember. That's sort of shit, isn't it? I like to think she was great, but," He stopped himself before he began to sound like Stereotypical Angsty Teenager. He wasn't just ready to face the but, not yet. He would one day, he knew. _I like to think she was great, but if she was, why would she have ended up with dad, and her oldest son's never been the most pleasant. _

"I – she's in a good place now," Brienne seemed entirely unsure of how to proceed. "Mine was – I remember her, but not a lot. Faintly."

Jaime stared out across the tinfoil lake, framed by cardboard trees, and filled his lungs with memories. "What was she like?" _Why do I care?_

"Kind. But sad, I think. I was too young to really get it, but I – she always wanted a big family, I think. And when Galladon left, she just had me. She tried to have more, and I remember she was so excited when they said she was pregnant again, but Arianne was stillborn, and then again, she was so thrilled, but she wouldn't get her hopes up. And then she died, with the next baby. And she never got to sort things out with my brother."

"I didn't know you had a brother."

"Galladon? He left when I was eight. He was years older and – I don't really know. He always loved me, but he and our parents always had a really rocky relationship. One day, he just left. Doesn't speak to Dad. He writes sometimes. To me, at least. He's in New Zealand now."

"That's horrible."

"It's fine."

Brienne looked so absurdly uncomfortable being put on a one-to-one spot and being expected to talk, openly and to _Jaime Lannister_, that he had to take pity on her and attempt, even if it was to no avail, to lighten the mood. "Look at us, the poor sad half-orphans."

"Half-orphans aren't a thing, Jaime."

"Of course they are, they're us. Sad motherless folk. Or fatherless. Just not both. Wish I were fatherless sometimes, but - "

"Jaime."

"Fine."

He glanced back down at his hands, feeling absurdly, remarkably better for talking. Lighter. Like he'd released a breath he hadn't even known he'd been holding in, let alone so tightly. Far behind them, the fading campfire's glow pulsed faintly, like a dusky jewel. Was it just him, or did the air feel different in his throat and lungs, and pressing down on him? It was like his head was empty now – maybe this was what Cersei needed, to get over her issues, just talking. But days ago, in this situation, he would be panicking about whether his supposed friends at school would find out, and what they'd do, but now they were gone entirely from his head.

Jaime let his gaze flicker up. She was the same as he'd always remembered; absurdly tall, but it was clear to him now by her every movement that she was probably self-conscious about that; this was the Brienne Tarth he'd always known, muttered jokes about in the hallways, as he did _everyone_; prominent teeth, hundreds of freckles, a nose broken more than once in the football she always so excelled at. Her eyes were beautiful, though. Why had he never noticed that before?

He only just realized, entangled in his own thoughts, that she was saying something, in that same awkward, unsure way she always spoke. Frowning, Jaime held up a finger to silence her. "Brienne – I just – Let me just try something,"

And he leaned foreward, and he kissed her.

It wasn't a monumental kiss. It wasn't what the idiot books were made of. It wasn't violins and magic. But it made him feel something. And Jaime was almost certain that that had never happened before. And he'd kissed a _lot_ of girls. It took her a while to respond, and start kissing back. But in that moment, Jaime was almost certain he'd been more than a complete and utter idiot the rest of his life, but _the_ complete and utter idiot.

He wasn't confused, for that split second. And he was smiling, somehow, when he turned away. He could almost hear Tyrion's voice in his head. _What is this? The sad, half-orphan kissing club? _

Jaime was too caught up in everything to pray nobody had noticed, but Classic Quarterback Jaime was reeling.


End file.
